
Class _Ej^1 

Book \aJ9k.^^ 
GopyiightN" 



COPlfRIGHT DEPOSrr. 




General Wood and His Family 
Taken while his two sons were in uniform during the World War. 
Left to right, standing: Lieut. Osborn Wood, Miss Louise Wood, 
Captain Leonard Wood, Jr. Sitting: Mrs. Wood and General Wood. 



THE LIFE OF 

LEONARD WOOD 

BY 
JOHN G. HOLME 




ILLUSTRATIONS 

FROM 

PHOTOGRAPHS 



Garden City New York 

DOUBLEDAY, PAGE & COMPANY 

1920 






COPYRIGHT, 1920, BY 

DOUBLEDAY, PAGE & COMPANY 

ALL RIGHTS RESEHVED, INCLUDING THAT OF 

TRANSLATION INTO FOREIGN LANGUAGES, 

INCLUDING THE BCANDINAVLiN 



•^;k 2b 1320 



g;Ci.A565315 



CONTENTS 



CHAPTEB PAGE 

I . Early Boyhood and School Days . S 



II . Soldier and Surgeon .... 
Ill . With Cleveland and McKinley . 

IV . COMaiANDER OF THE RoUGH RiDERS 

V . The Rescuer of Santiago . 

VI. Governor and Business Manager of 
Cuba 



VII . Pacifier of the Philippines 

VIII . Chief-of-Staff of the U. S. Army 

IX . The Awakener of the Nation 

X . The Champion of Law and Order 



12 

27 
44 
55 

81 
135 
153 
177 

207 



LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS 

y 

General Wood and His Family . Frontis'pwce 

FAONG PAGE ^ 

At a Flower Show in New York .... 20 -''^ 

As a Rough Rider in Cuba, and as Governor- 
General 116 

In Camp at Plattsburgh 180 



INTRODUCTION 

NEVER since the Civil War have the Ameri- 
can people been in greater need of strong and in- 
telligent leadership than to-day. The period of 
reconstruction, about which we began to talk soon 
after we entered the late war, is now upon us with 
problems more complex and grave than any with 
which the nation has had to grapple since the days 
of the secession. The administration, which in 
the summer of 1914 commanded us to remain 
"neutral in thought" and two years later sought 
endorsement under the slogan that it had "kept 
us out of war," subsequently informed us that this 
world would be a different and a better one after it 
had been made "safe for democracy." 

This is indeed a different world from that of a 
few years ago, but most of us are convinced that, 
whatever its faults, we at least live in the best part 
thereof. Behind that conviction, however, arises 
an apprehension, born of events during the past 
year, of impending attacks on the most cherished 
institutions of our republic. When law and order 
are defied, when the authority of the central 



viii Introduction 

government is challenged by organized groups 
whose avowed aim is to establish internationalism 
by the destruction of nationaHsm, it becomes easy 
to understand why the American people at this 
time are looking anxiously toward their future 
security and displaying profound interest in that 
group of national leaders from which most prob- 
ably will be chosen the next President of the 
United States. The late war, the greatest in 
history, has left the world a legacy of social and 
economic problems more grave and troublesome 
than the problems of any other period in modern 
times. It will devolve on the next administra- 
tion to solve at least some of these problems and 
to shape a wise policy which will lead to the solu- 
tion of others. 

Hundreds of millions of men and women in 
America and in Europe have been released from a 
titanic struggle which cost countless sacrifices in 
blood and treasure. These millions are now re- 
covering from the shock of battle. They are 
trying to find their peace balance. It is difficult 
work, for the world is still economically upset, 
and socially in a state of turmoil. Since that 
memorable day in November a year ago, when 
Prussian autocracy surrendered, giving up its 
pretentions foi: world dominion, literally thousands 
of remedies have been offered for the war ills of 



Introduction ix 

civilization. It seems to the writer that not a 
single one of these suggested remedies can equal 
the simple and homely formula spoken before an 
audience in Passaic, New Jersey, on the evening of 
January 11, 1920. The speaker wore the khaki 
uniform of an American army oflBcer. His bron- 
zed, kindly face was deeply lined with furrows and 
his voice rang with emotion as he said: 

"The watchword of this country to-day should 
be 'Steady' and the slogan should be 'Law and 
Order.' Hold on to the things that made us what 
we are. Stand for government under the Con- 
stitution. Stand for the homely, plain things 
which really lie at the foundation of our govern- 
ment. We want to stand with our feet squarely 
on the earth, our eye on God, our ideals high but 
steady." 

The speaker was Major-General Leonard Wood, 
and it seems to me that in the above words he 
came nearer to giving voice to the thoughts that 
lie closer to the heart of the American nation 
to-day than the whole host of political prophets 
who have addressed us during the past year. 

I believe there is no man in this great land who 
can point to a career richer in service to his fellow- 
men than this doctor-soldier-administrator. He 
has devoted his whole life to his country in a pro- 
fession that is not popular, except in time of war. 



X Introduction 

And yet his great deeds, bestowing happiness on 
alien peoples and undying honour on his own 
country, have been performed in the capacity of 
a civil administrator, a business executive. There 
is no parallel to Wood's Cuban labours. Wood's 
record in Cuba forms one of the shining chapters 
in our national chronicles, one of the fair pages 
in the history of civilization. When in 1903 
the University of Pennsj^lvania conferred on 
General Wood the honorary degree of LL.D., 
Dr. Horace Howard Furness said: "Can mortal 
hps pray for a fairer guerdon in this life than 
to be able to 'scatter plenty o'er a smiling land' 
and on the cheek where malaria spreads disease 
bid 'health to plant the rose'.'^ Or by wise 
statesmanship to lure again to their peaceful paths 
traffic and commerce, affrighted by turbulence of 
war? Or to hear the lisping hum of schools 
beneath the Northern pine reechoed beneath the 
waving Southern palm.'' " 

To what extent this saviour of Cuba became the 
rescuer of the United States during the late war 
we of the present generation may never be able to 
determine. "What we do know is that he stirred 
the soul of America by his courage and patriotism 
when other leaders of our country maintained and 
enjoined on us a craven silence. How many 
parents of this land owe the lives of their sons to 



Introduction xi 

the wise preparedness labour of General Wood? 
We can only speculate on the answer, and recall 
the remark of General "Lighthorse Harry" Lee: 
"Convinced as I am that the government is the 
murderer of its citizens which sends them to the 
field uninformed and untaught — I cannot withhold 
my denunciations of its wickedness and folly." 

"I am not astonished at your ability to recruit 
and train 4,000,000 troops in nineteen months," 
said a French officer detailed to one of our Na- 
tional Army camps, "but your ability to train the 
officers for these troops is miraculous." 

Wood was the precursor of that miracle. His 
Plattsburgh camps became the model of our 
officers' training camps, and the model was in 
perfect working order a year before we entered the 
war. Leonard Wood has achieved a high distinc- 
tion as an army officer, and yet a more unmilita- 
aristic, more democratic American you cannot 
find among the hundred million inhabitants of this 
country. 

The writer of this brief outline of the life and 
works of Leonard Wood is by profession a news- 
paper man who has had wide experience meeting 
the prominent men of the United States, and has 
an unusual ability in analyzing and estimating 
character. He has sought my advice and assist- 



xii Introduction 

ance in the compilation of this book; and being 
acquainted with both the subject and the author, 
I have read the manuscript with much interest 
and beheve the book will be of great value to any 
reader. Of the career of Leonard Wood, the late 
Theodore Roosevelt said, when writing in The 
Outlook in 1910, at the time that Wood was pro- 
moted to the post of Chief of the General Staff of 
the U. S. Army: "His career has been astonishing, 
and it has been due purely to his own striking 
qualifications and striking achievements." 

Frederick Moore. 
New York, February 27, 1920. 



THE LIFE OF 
LEONARD WOOD 



THE LIFE OF 

LEONARD WOOD 

I 

Early Boyhood and School Days 

A LITTLE more than twenty years ago — the 
exact date was December 12, 1899 — Leonard 
Wood, a Major-General of volunteers, received 
the oddest, and at least in some respects the most 
interesting, order that any government has ever 
issued to an army officer. 

He was appointed INIilitary Governor of an 
island which had for four hundred years been a 
colonial dependency of one of the most reactionary 
monarchies on the face of the globe, and ordered to 
train its million and a half inhabitants for demo- 
cratic self-government, and do the job as quickly 
as he could and then come home. The appoint- 
ment made him absolute ruler over the island and 
its inhabitants. He became, in fact, if not in 
name, a monarch. His job was to build and re- 

3 



4 The Life of Leonard Wood 

build and repair all the civil institutions of the 
island, such as the courts, the customs and postal 
departments, the school system, the electoral 
sj'^stem, and to supervise and aid the writing of a 
constitution. Wood finished the job in two years 
and a half and came home. 

Two years before receiving this appointment 
to rehabilitate Cuba and set her on her own in- 
dependent feet. Wood was an obscure army sur- 
geon with the ranlv of a captain. Long before he 
had finished with Cuba he was an international 
figure. TMien he came home, he was assigned to a 
somewhat minor post in the Philippines. After 
that he became Chief -of -Staff in Washington. 
Then he was shifted from one post to another 
such as any General might fill. To-day he is 
commander of the Central Department with head- 
quarters in the half-empty War Department build- 
ing in Chicago, a few blocks north of the Chicago 
River; and he is more talked about throughout 
this country than when he was sole master of 
the island of Cuba. 

If he had followed the ordinary rules, his public 
demise should have taken place about the time he 
embarked for the Phihppines to take a subordinate 
post in the islands. However, he did the Philippine 
job so well that he was made Chief-of-Staff of 
the United States Army. But thereafter a decent 



Early Boyhood and School Days 5 

permanent burial in one of our quiet army bureaus 
might have been expected under a Democratic 
regime, especially for a man who had been so 
closely identified with the preceding Republican 
administration. Instead of that Wood is to-day 
the leading candidate for the Repubhcan party's 
nomination for President of the United States. 

He was not to be permitted to take an active part 
overseas in the late war. Nevertheless, like all 
our general officers in charge of troop training 
camps at home, he had to be sent to Europe for an 
inspection of the battlefields. A French artillery 
piece exploded, killing several officers in his partj^^ 
and severely wounding General Wood. At the 
close of the war, Wood was one of the very few 
American generals entitled to wear a wound 
stripe. 

General Wood has never kept quiet in any job 
he has ever held in the United States Army during 
his thirty -five years of active service. When there 
was work to do, he has done it, from chasing bad 
Indians all over our great Southwest back in the 
'eighties and over a good slice of Mexico's north- 
west, to teaching Cuba how to rule herself. When 
he had nothing to do but run one of our army 
departments, which practically run themselves, 
and draw his army salary, he would pick up odd 
jobs such as preaching preparedness for the late 



6 The Life of Leonard Wood 

war, and organizing camps for the training of 
officers. He has been a breeder of action just like 
his closest friend, the late Theodore Roosevelt. 
By keeping in such exercise, he has persistently 
declined to outlive the great reputation he made 
in Cuba. Otherwise various Repubhcan State 
organizations would not be endorsing him for 
presidential candidate at the present time. 

Wood is fifty-nine years old, strong, and in 
splendid physical condition. He stands about 
five feet ten or eleven inches, and weighs close to 
two hundred pounds. He is a powerfully built man 
with the bulging muscles of one who has done 
manual work. If he were in civilian clothes, you 
might take him for a sea captain for he walks with 
an exaggerated rolling gait rather than a limp, the 
result of an accident which impaired his left leg 
some years ago. His voice is deep, with splendid 
carrying qualities, and yet it is pleasant, even 
gentle. There is utterly nothing of military fuss or 
pomp about this man who has been in uniform 
most of his life. But he carries a distinct air of 
authority, the natural attribute of a veteran army 
officer. In speech he is always direct and forceful, 
sometimes picturesque. His eyes are blue and his 
hair is of a neutral light colour and looks as if the 
sun, rather than age, had faded it. His face is lined 
with deep furrows, the brand that the sun and wind 



Early Boyhood and School Days 7 

of the Southwest, where he spent ten years of his 
early army Hfe, stamp on the countenances of the 
farmers and rangers of that region. 

He is a New Englander by birth, and he can 
trace his genealogy through a line of farmers, 
merchants, soldiers, sailors, and doctors, back to 
the earliest New England Colonial days. On his 
paternal side he is descended from Peregrine 
White, the first white child bom in Plymouth 
colony, whose parents came over on the May- 
flower. The New England stock from which Gen- 
eral Wood is descended has mixed democracy in 
politics with its religion for four hundred years, 
and it has not been accustomed to compromise 
with its convictions in either politics or religion. 

Recently a New England admirer of General 
Wood sent him his genealogical table, tracing his 
ancestry on both his paternal and maternal sides 
back to the first appearance of his various fore- 
bears on American soil. The document is in- 
teresting in the fact that nearly all the branches 
of his family seem to have settled in this country 
before the Revolution; with rare exceptions the 
names indicate Anglo-Saxon origin. A few names 
which might be Irish or Welsh appear in the table, 
and one French name, Jacques, probably French- 
Canadian. But the most prevalent names are 
those of Wood, Hagar, Bragg, Boynton, Nixon, 



8 The Life of Leonard Wood 

Reed, Thompson, White, Fiske, Flagg, Pierce, 
Cutler, and Berry. One of his ancestors on his 
mother's side, Brigadier-General John Nixon, had 
a distinguished record in the War of the Revolu- 
tion, commanding a company at Lexington, a 
regiment at Bunker Hill, and a brigade at Saratoga. 

Names gather their traditions and character 
and they need not acquire fame or distinction 
before so doing. These old New England names 
borne by General Wood's grandsires suggest 
such decent human careers as built the founda- 
tion of our Republic — sailors, farmers, village 
storekeepers, and merchants — the stock from which 
our country drew its strength in time of trouble, 
the stock which supplied the pioneers of the West. 

Leonard Wood was born in Winchester, New 
Hampshire, on October 9, 1860, the son of Dr. 
Charles Jewett Wood and Caroline Hager Wood. 
When Leonard was a few months old the family 
moved to Massachusetts, where the father re- 
sponded to Lincoln's first call for volunteers. He 
served in the Forty-second Massachusetts regi- 
ment for the greater part of the Civil War, and was 
invalided home shortly before peace was restored. 
When the son was eight years old, Dr. Wood 
settled in Pocasset on Cape Cod, and in this barren 
but picturesque region Leonard Wood grew to 
early manhood. There seems to have been noth- 



Early Boyhood and School Days 9 

ing especially remarkable about his boyhood or 
early youth. 

He attended the village school in Pocasset, and 
a boyhood friend described him as a stocky, well- 
built lad vnth blue eyes and hair of the colour of 
cauLking-tow. He was shy, silent, and sensitive. 
He showed in school a fondness for the languages 
and history, but he disliked mathematics. He 
read mostly books on travel, history, and adven- 
ture with an occasional novel. 

Like most Cape Cod boys, he was an excellent 
sailor and swimmer. He was an out-of-door boy 
as he has always been an out-of-door man. In- 
cidentally, it may be mentioned that it is the out- 
of-door boy and man who is physically best fitted 
to perform the most gruelling indoor work. The 
days young Wood spent exploring the hills of Cape 
Cod and sailing on Cape Cod Bay and Buzzards 
Bay were days well spent for himself and his coun- 
try. These days built up a body which later 
fought malaria, yellow fever, and typhoid in the 
pest holes of Cuba, and won out. 

There never was a surplus of wealth in the l^ood 
family, and Leonard Wood had to plan early in 
Hfe to take care of himself. He attended Middle- 
boro Academy, where he made more of a reputa- 
tion as an athlete than student, and yet he kept 
up with his class, never neglecting his studies; 



10 The Life of Leonard Wood 

but when it came to cross-country running, foot- 
ball, and other sports, he entered into his work with 
a zest which set him apart from his fellow students. 
When he finished at Middleboro, he was famous as 
a cross-country runner. 

He was now face to face with the problem of 
choosing a career. He had a deep longing for the 
navy, but in those days the chances for advance- 
ment in the navy were poor. He got in 
touch with an Arctic expedition and went so far 
as to purchase equipment for the northern journey. 
Then came a council of war between father and 
son. The father did not seem to think much of 
the Arctics as a field of endeavour for a young 
man, especially as there were plenty of openings 
in the United States for any ambitious youth. He 
advised his son to take up his own profession, that 
of medicine, with the result that Leonard Wood 
entered the Harvard University Medical School 
in 1880 and graduated in 1884. 

"I had a general notion that I wanted to be of 
some service to my country," said General Wood 
when asked about his boyhood ambition. "I also 
wanted to see something of my country besides the 
East. When I found that I could not get into the 
navy, I determined to try the army." 

Wood made his own way through college, partly 
by the aid of a scholarship, but principally by 



Early Boyhood and School Days 11 

tutoring and doing other odd jobs. What vsdth 
attending to his studies and making his own living, 
he was too busy to devote much attention to 
athletics, and most of his football playing was done 
in later years at army posts. Football has always 
been his favourite game, and he played it whenever 
he had a chance until he was nearly forty years 
old. He would have kept on with it but for the 
fact that his duties took him to Cuba and the 
Philippines, and football is not a game for the 
tropics. 

After his graduation from Harvard he served 
an internship in the Boston City Hospital, special- 
izing in surgery. One of his old friends described 
Wood as having been a shy and silent young man 
about this time, *'a regular hog for work," who 
could always be depended on to attend to his 
patients with the utmost care. He opened an 
office in the poorer section of Boston, but as most 
of his practice was city charity work, it was not 
especially remunerative. 



n 

Soldier and Surgeon 

AFTER a few months of general practice Wood 
went to New York City and took the examination 
for a surgeon in the United States Army with fifty- 
nine other young physicians. He surprised him- 
self by passing second on the hst. There was no 
immediate vacancy in the army Medical Corps. 
However, there was Indian fighting cropping out 
in the Southwest, and on June 5, 1885, Wood 
received his appointment as assistant surgeon. 
There was some dispute about the matter of his 
rank and he was asked if he would enter the service 
as a contract surgeon. 

"Yes, if I can go West and see active service." 

He was assured that he would see all the active 
service that he wanted, and during the next few 
years he realized that this was no idle talk. 

He was ordered to Fort Huachuca, Arizona, 
where General Crook was in command of the opera- 
tions against the Apaches, and assigned to Whipple 
Barracks under the command of Captain Henry 

12 



Soldier and Surgeon 13 

W. Lawton, already a noted Indian fighter. Law- 
ton later won great fame as commander in Cuba 
and the Phihppines. Leonard Wood reached 
Whipple Barracks late in the afternoon of a broil- 
ing Fourth of July. There was an old-fashioned 
Independence Day celebration in full swing at 
the post. Soldiers, cowpunchers, frontiersmen, 
and half-breed Indians were observing the day 
in true Western style with liquor and gunpowder. 
The young New Englander received a characteris- 
tic greeting from Captain Lawton, who looked him 
over somewhat critically, and said: 

"What in hell are you doing out here.'^" 
"I want to get into the line as soon as possible.'* 
This was the sort of an answer that appealed 
to Lawton, who at once changed his attitude and 
said: 

"Come along and I'll see what I can do to help 
you. 

This help consisted in giving the new army doc- 
tor an immediate chance to see early action. There 
was a detachment about to be sent out on an In- 
dian chase, and Wood was given orders to ac- 
company the troops. The column started oflF 
early the next morning, Wood being presented 
with an unassigned horse. "A very special horse," 
the sergeant remarked as he handed the reins to 
the tenderfoot. 



14 The Life of Leonard Wood 

It was indeed something of *'a special horse" as 
its rider soon discovered. It was half-broke and 
ill-tempered to boot. Even the veteran troopers 
had dodged it because of its vicious gait. It 
proved, in fact, to be nothing less than an "out- 
law" and the young Easterner was not an ex- 
perienced horseman. 

There was not a man in the outfit that did not 
expect Wood to be throwTi; at least the troopers 
were certain he would fall back after an hour or 
so. But Leonard Wood had already acquired the 
habit which has stuck to him throughout his life, 
that of finishing any job he undertook to do. He 
rode his "outlaw" thirty-five miles the first day, 
and he was not thrown. During the next five 
days he averaged eighteen hours a day in the 
saddle or marching, and this over the roughest 
country in Arizona and in the blistering heat of 
midsummer. It was a tough test, even for 
the veterans. Wood was scorched and blistered, 
but he never thought of giving up, and his temper 
was not even spoiled. He smiled and kept up 
with the old troopers. He never got the oppor- 
tunity to rest and mend, and in the language of 
the army he "healed in the saddle." Within a 
few weeks he was able to out-ride and out-march 
many of Captain Lawton's veterans. 

It had been Leonard Wood's good fortune to 



Soldier and Surgeon 15 

join Captain Lawton just at the beginning of what 
developed into the last long campaign of the war 
with the Apaches who were under the able leader- 
ship of the notorious Geronimo. There was not 
much actual fighting. Geronimo was by far too 
shrewd a commander to be drawn into a pitched 
battle. He and his "human tigers" waged war 
by assassination. They would raid white settle- 
ments and Indian reservations alike, kill white 
and red alike, round up the live stock, and flee 
to the mountains. Their depredations extended 
into Mexico, and the warfare into which Wood was 
plunged took him over wild, rough country on 
both sides of the line. Three months after he 
joined Lawton's command he was leading small 
picked forces whose officers had broken under 
the strain. He was rapidly establishing a reputa- 
tion among the old troopers for his remarkable 
physical strength and endurance, qualities which 
enabled him not only to make good as an Indian 
fighter, but made it possible for him later in life to 
stand up under the terribly unhealthful conditions 
in Cuba and the Philippines. 

The campaign which resulted in Geronimo's 
capture lasted for more than fourteen months. 
During most of this time the young army doctor 
was on the trail. 

The pursuit led over the roughest and wildest 



16 Tlie Life of Leonard Wood 

sections of our Southwest, and into the Mexican 
states of Sonora and Chihuahua. The course 
taken by the Indians lay to the west of that fol- 
lowed by General Pershing when he chased Pancho 
Villa across the border. General Nelson A. Miles 
had succeeded General Crook, and being one of 
the greatest Indian fighters the country ever 
produced, he had definite ideas on conducting a 
campaign against the red men. His formula was 
to follow the Indians night and day wherever they 
went, no matter how rough the country, and never 
to give them any rest until they were killed or 
captured. 

There could be but one outcome to the unequal 
struggle. The tragic doom of the red man was 
sealed the moment he determined to pit his brute 
power against the brain power of the white man. 
However, in the campaign against Geronimo's 
Apaches, the odds were often in favour of the 
Indians; and here the story of all our Indian wars, 
as well as the story of most wars between civilized 
men and savages, was repeated. The eventual 
outcome was never in doubt, though the outcome 
of each individual engagement or skirmish was 
always doubtful. Our soldiers had to fight the 
Apaches in their own natural environment, under 
conditions most favpurable to them. The Apaches 
were masters of the wilderness. They could live 



Soldier and Surgeon 17 

off the land wherever they went, subsist on roots, 
cactus, mice, rabbits, woodchucks, and other 
rodents when they couldn't steal cattle. They 
knew all the hiding places in the unsettled regions 
of the great Southwest. They could travel at 
remarkable speed on horseback or on foot, being 
unimpeded by baggage or commissary stores. 
They would steal horses, ride them to death, then 
eat them. 

To deal with these savages on anything ap- 
proaching equal terms, the white soldiers had to 
become masters of the wilderness. They, too, had 
to toughen their bodies until they were equal in 
endurance to the red men. They had to accustom 
themselves to long forays, and dispense with their 
pack -trains carrying food supphes. They might 
in time equal the Indians in their knowledge of 
the country. They could never hope to develop 
the red man's keen natural sense of sight and smell 
and hearing, or his animal-like ability to divine the 
proximity of a foe. 

When Leonard Wood abandoned his civil career 
and joined the army, our great Western country 
was in that stage of early development which of- 
fered the most alluring prospects for young men 
of his professional training and natural ability. 
Horace Greeley's famous slogan, " Go West, young 
man, and grow up wdth the country," was still as 



18 TJie Life of Leonard Wood 

fresh as the day it was uttered. It was still shap- 
ing the careers of thousands of enterprising young 
Easterners. Each west-bound train, one might 
say, carried its Greeley cargo of young men and 
high hopes. Never was there a movement of 
immigration destined for greater success than that 
which moved across the Mississippi in the 'seventies 
and 'eighties. Leonard Wood could have satisfied 
his desire to see the West by moving into one of the 
booming Western cities and hanging out his shingle. 
With the prestige which a diploma from one of 
the country's foremost educational institutions 
gave him, his professional success and material 
prosperity were virtually assured. 

One could readily understand how a reckless 
youngster, spoiling for the want of action, whose 
mind was filled with the adventures of the buffalo 
hunt, the mining field, and the Indian chase, would 
go into the army or seek the frontiers to satisfy his 
desires. But Wood was not of that type. He was 
a thoughtful, quite young man on whom the im- 
press of our Eastern culture had indelibly left its 
mark. It was unusual in the extreme not only to 
find a man of his stamp along the frontier, but to 
find him holding his own in the physical tests which 
the life of the frontier demanded. And Leonard 
Wood had entered, on this hfe with a serious pur- 
pose, that of serving his country while satisfying 



Soldier and Surgeon 19 

his own youthful craving for adventure and the 
wide, open spaces. 

Geronimo and his band would no doubt have 
escaped had they been content to remain in the 
fastnesses of Sonora and Chihuahua in the fall of 
1885. But they were on the war path. In the 
spring of 1886 they returned to the north, in- 
vading the United States and committing in- 
numerable atrocities. Now began the great chase 
which was to take Captain Lawton and his picked 
force of troopers and Indian scouts more than two 
thousand miles. It was in this brief but terrible 
campaign that Wood won his laurels as an Indian 
fighter. He had by this time been commissioned 
first lieutenant. Early in the pursuit he covered 
a distance of one hundred and thirty-six miles in 
thirty-six hours on foot and on horseback. On 
another occasion, after a day's march of twenty* 
five miles with his troopers and Indian scouts, 
he rode seventy-four miles during the night, 
carrying dispatches, and on the following day 
he marched thirty miles. A good share of the 
time tlie chase led over a desert country, and it 
was not uncommon for the pursuers to be without 
water for from eighteen to twenty-four hours. 
The only consolation that the white men had was 
that the Apaches were suffering no less. They 
knew from unmistakable signs that the end was 



20 The Life of Leonard Wood 

in sight. The Apaches had ceased to rob and mur- 
der, a sure indication that they were contemplating 
surrender. 

The troopers were in fact wearing out the In-' 
dians. It was the Fourth Cavah-y, Lawton's com- 
mand, that did most of the chasing and fighting. 
Members of this troop said that before Geronimo 
was captured, Wood was known as one of the few 
white men of the Southwest who could ride, run, 
or walk down an Apache. Wood and his men 
traversed on foot and on horseback the mountains 
and deserts of New Mexico and Arizona where 
no white man had ever been before. They would 
flush the Apaches, scatter them, drive them away 
from their food stores and stolen cattle, thus 
following the INIiles formula of never giving the 
red men rest. 

Finally came the report that Geronimo wished 
to open communications. Lieutenant Gate wood 
was sent by Captain Lawton accompanied by two 
friendly Apaches into the hostile camps to demand 
capitulation. This Geronimo refused to do saying 
that he would only talk with "the oflScer who had 
followed them all summer," namely, Lawton. 
Shortly afterward satisfactory arrangements were 
made for a formal surrender of Geronuno and his 
hostile tribe to General Miles, Lawton acting as an 
intermediary. 




I Paul Thompson 

At a Flower Show in New York 

Theodore Roosevelt, Leonard Wood, and Arthur Woods, formerly 

Police' Commissioner of New York City 



Soldier and Surgeon 21 

The preliminary negotiations took place near 
Fronteraz, a little hamlet south of the border in the 
State of Sonora. It was agreed that the troops 
and the Indians should move northward into the 
United States, and as a mark of good faith, Cap- 
tain Lawton, Lieutenant Wood, and two other 
ofiicers were to travel with them. The two 
columns became separated through a mistake in 
orders and contact was lost between the American 
troops and the Indians. Captain Lawton had 
to leave the Apaches in search of his troops. Thus 
Wood and his two brother officers were practically 
left as hostages with the Indians. 

Their position at first seemed precarious, to say 
the least. Only a few weeks before the reds 
had been murdering every white person who came 
within their reach. Writing of this incident. 
General Wood says: 

Instead of taking advantage of our position, they 
assured us that while we were in their camp it was our 
camp, and that as we had never lied to them they were 
going to keep faith with us. They gave us the best 
they had to eat and treated us as well as we could wish 
in every way. Just before giving us these assurances, 
Geronimo came to me and asked to see my rifle. It 
was a Hotchkiss and he had never seen its mechanism. 
When he asked me for the gun and some ammunition, 
I must confess I felt a little nervous, for I thought it 
might be a device to get hold of one of our weapons. 



22 The Life of Leonard Wood 

I made no objection, however, but let him have it, 
showed him how to use it, and he fired at a mark, just 
missing one of his own men, which he regarded as a 
great joke, rolling on the ground, laughing heartily and 
saying, "good gun." 

Late the next afternoon we came up with our com- 
mand, and we then proceeded toward the boundary 
line. The Indians were very watchful, and when we 
came near any of our troops we found the Indians were 
always aware of their presence before we knew of it 
ourselves. 

After a northward march of eleven days the 
two columns came to a halt and a formal sur- 
render took place in Skelton Canon. Geronimo 
spoke no English and the conversation between 
him and General Miles was carried on through an 
interpreter. 

"General IVIiles wishes to assure you that he is 
your friend," said the interpreter, addressing 
Geronimo. 

"I've never seen him, but I have been in need 
of friends," replied Geronimo, who was gifted with 
a sense of humour. "If he is my friend, why has 
he not been with me.'^" 

Everybody laughed at the Apache leader's joke, 
and the negotiations proceeded through the 
mediumship of the interpreter and the eloquent 
sign language of which General Miles was a mas- 
ter. Contrary to all expectations, the death 



I 



Soldier and Surgeon 23 

penalty was not imposed on Geronimo or Natchez 
or any of the other Apache leaders. In his own 
dictated story, published many years later, and 
dedicated to Theodore Roosevelt, then President 
of the United States, Geronimo tells of the peace 
negotiations and mentions that Dr. Wood was one 
of the men who came into his camp to deal with 
him. 

Although at this time he was only a junior officer 
with very limited army experience, Leonard Wood 
immediately drew the attention of General Miles, 
who says in his published memoirs: 

I also found at Fort Huachuca another splendid type 
of American manhood. Captain Leonard Wood, As- 
sistant Surgeon, United States Army. He was a yoimg 
officer, age twenty-four, a native of Massachusetts, a 
graduate of Harvard, a fair-haired, blue-eyed young 
man of great intelligence, sterling, manly qualities and 
resolute spirit. He was also perhaps as fine a specimen 
of physical strength and endurance as could easily be 
found. 

. . . His services and observations and example were 
most commendable and valuable, and added much 
to the physical success of the enterprise. 

At the time he wrote. Wood had won a captain's 
commission, but he was only a first lieutenant 
when General Miles met him at Fort Huachuca. 



24 The Life of Leonard Wood 

Captain Lawton, in his official report of the cam- 
paign, says: 

No officer of infantry having been sent with the de- 
tachment. . . . Assistant Surgeon Wood was, at 
his own request, given command of the infantry. The 
work during June having been done by the cavalry, they 
were too much exhausted to be used again without rest, 
and they were left in camp at Oposura to recuperate. 

During the short campaign, the suffering was in- 
tense. The country was indescribably rough, and the 
weather swelteringly hot, with heavy rains for day or 
night. The endurance of the men was tried to the 
utmost limit. Disabilities resulting from excessive 
fatigue reduced the infantry to fourteen men, and as 
they were worn out and without shoes when the new 
supplies reached me July 29th, they were returned to 
the supply camp for rest. . . . Heavy rains having 
set in, the trail of the hostiles, who were all on foot, was 
entirely obliterated. 

I desire particularly to invite the attention of the 
Department Commander to Assistant Surgeon Leonard 
Wood, the only officer who has been with me through 
the whole campaign. His courage, energy, and loyal 
support during the whole time; his encouraging ex- 
ample to the command when work was the hardest and 
prospects darkest; his thorough confidence and belief 
in the final success of the expedition, and his untiring 
efforts to make it so, have placed me under obligations 
so great that I cannot even express them. 

There have been few men in the United States 
Army whose standards of soldierly conduct were 



Soldier and Surgeon 25 

higher than those of General Lawton, few officers 
whose commendations were more highly prized. 
This rough old warrior, like Wood, was a product 
of Harvard. Between the two there sprang up an 
intimate friendship which lasted until the death of 
General Lawton in the Philippines. It was of 
inestimable value to Wood to be associated with 
such a man in his early career. Although they 
differed greatly in temperament, both were born 
leaders, both soldiers by nature. Wood learned 
much of military art from him and of the still more 
complex and difficult art of handhng men of all 
types under trying conditions. 

It is impossible not to be impressed by the praise 
bestowed on the young medical officer, who had 
come into the army totally without military train- 
ing, and who, within a few weeks, had displayed 
such striking qualities of leadership, and had so 
quickly mastered the essentials of military science, 
that he was entrusted with command of troops in a 
difficult campaign. He had come from the most 
densely populated and the most cultivated section 
of the country into a howling wilderness, there to 
join in a life-and-death struggle waged between 
American troopers, who were by no means a set of 
Sunday-school boys, and a band of Apaches, 
whose name has been perpetuated in our and other 
languages as an epithet descriptive of savage 



26 The Life of Leonard Wood 

brutality. He won distinction in the conflict 
which tested not only personal bravery, but the 
highest qualities of manhood. 

In March, 1898, nearly twelve years after the 
Geronimo campaign, Leonard Wood was awarded 
the Congressional Medal of Honour, then, as now, 
the highest military decoration within the gift of 
the nation. It was presented "for distinguished 
conduct in the campaign against the Apache In- 
dians in 1886 while serving as medical and line 
officer of Captain Lawton's expedition." 



Ill 

With Cleveland and McKinley 

FOLLOWING the surrender of Geronimo and 
his band of Apaches, Leonard Wood found time 
to study the intricate technical side of miUtary 
science to which he devoted himself with character- 
istic energy. He had already learned how to get 
the maximum amount of work out of himself by 
keeping his body in top-notch physical condition. 
This work knowledge he applied to his perusal of 
standard works on military technique and military 
organization and to the practical troop maneuvers 
in the field. 

During the Indian campaign he had become 
greatly interested in the heliograph system of 
signalling which General Miles was developing. 
To expand his signalling system, General Miles 
ordered a survey of the State of Arizona; and be- 
cause of the intelligent interest which Wood had 
displayed in this work, Miles made him one of his 
chief assistants. The survey consumed several 
months, and when it was accomplished Wood 

27 



28 The Life of Leonard Wood 

probably had a more thorough knowledge of 
Arizona than had any other army oflScer. 

In 1889 Wood was assigned to army head- 
quarters in Los Angeles as one of the staff surgeons. 
It promised to be an uneventful assignment, but 
Wood did not find it so. He continued to devote 
himself to his military studies, and incidentally to 
engage in his favourite pastime, football. 

Up to this time he had served constantly as an 
army surgeon. His work as line officer in the 
Indian campaign and on the surveying expedition 
as well as his study of military science, was purely 
voluntary. The fact that he was knowTi as a 
resourceful surgeon caused General Miles to 
summon him to his bedside after a serious ac- 
cident. The General's horse had fallen with him, 
crushing his leg. The most skillful surgeons of 
Los Angeles attended the distinguished patient 
and all agreed that an amputation was necessary. 

"The doctors say that they will have to cut off 
this leg, but they are not going to do it," General 
Miles said to Wood when he arrived. "I'm going 
to leave it to you. You'll have to save it." 

After a thorough examination of the injured leg 
Wood announced confidently that there was no 
necessity for amputation. In a reasonable time 
General Miles was, walking around on two legs, his 
injury healed. 



With Cleveland and McKinley 29 

In spite of the severe lessons of the past, scat- 
tered bands of Indians would go out on the war 
path now and then only to be rounded up by our 
cavalry after a few weeks. In 1888 another band 
of Apaches broke out of the reservation. This 
time the leader was the Apache Kid who endeav- 
oured to duplicate Geronimo's reign of terror in 
the Southwest. Because of his experience in Indian 
fighting, Wood was assigned to the Tenth Cavalry 
which crushed the savages in a campaign lasting 
only a few months. Wood was then ordered back 
to California where he served at various posts 
until 1892, when he was assigned to Fort Mc- 
Pherson near Atlanta, Georgia. In the year pre- 
vious he had been promoted to the rank of captain. 

It was at Fort McPherson that Leonard Wood 
won his greatest reputation as a football player. 
For two years he was captain and coach of the 
Georgia Institute of Technology team, losing but 
one game. At that time the rigid inter-scholastic 
, rules which now govern the sport had not been 
adopted, and no objection was found against the 
appearance on the gridiron of the husky, middle- 
aged army officer who could buck the line or shoot 
around an end with the impetus and speed of an 
undergraduate of eighteen. 

There is an incident told by one of his fellow 
football players which illustrates Wood's Spartan 



30 The Life of Leonard Wood 

courage and recalls the tale of old "Oom" Paul 
Kruger, the late president of the Transvaal, who 
is credited with having pulled out one of his own 
molars which was aching. One day in a football 
scrimmage Wood received a deep cut over one eye. 
He dressed the wound hastily himself and con- 
tinued playing. After the game he returned to his 
ofBce, sterilized the wound, and standing in front 
of his mirror, took four stitches in it. 

During the time of his service in the West he 
had met Miss Louise A. Condit Smith, a niece 
of Chief Justice Field of the Supreme Court. They 
were married after a brief courtshii) in 1890. Their 
union has been a very happy one and has been 
blessed by three children, two boys and one girl,' 
now grown up to manhood and womanhood. Mrs. 
Wood shared her husband's devotion to outdoor 
jlife and the simplicity of his tastes. Both of the 
sons served in the late war. As captain of in- 
fantry, Leonard Wood, Jr., was more successful 
than his father in getting over seas to fight in the 
war for democracy. On being discharged from the 
army, he entered the oil business in Texas in which 
he is still engaged. Osborne C. Wood, the second 
son, a member of the class of 1920 of Harvard, 
left his studies shortly after war was declared 
and enlisted as a private. He won his commission 
but was not called upon for overseas duty. At 



With Cleveland and McKinley 31 

this writing he is still on active duty. Louise 
Wood, born in Havana, Cuba, while her father 
was Governor-General of the island, is attending 
school in the East. 

As is generally the case with men of ambition 
and initiative, married life brought co Leonard 
Wood a sharp sense of family duties and respon- 
sibilities. Life at the army posts in California 
and Georgia was pleasant. His duties as surgeon 
were light, and he found ample time to devote 
himself to his family and to football and other 
sports. But in the meantime, he was approach- 
ing middle age, the prospects for advancement 
were meagre, and he felt that he had accomplished 
little to provide for the future of his family. He 
was becoming famous in the South as a football 
player, but when he took stock of himself, as he 
often did, he could not help realizing that he was 
marking time just like many of his brother officers. 
In other words, he was passing through that un- 
pleasant stage which most army and navy officers 
well know when they are speculating on leaving 
the service and making a fresh start in some other 
pursuit offering more activity for their talents and 
greater financial rewards for their families and 
themselves. 

"I made up my mind that if nothing happened 
before I was forty, I would resign," said General 



32 The Life of Leonard Wood 

Wood in discussing this period of his hfe. "I 
was still in love with the West, and I was seriously 
thinking of going in for ranching. I had practi- 
cally decided to become a rancher when the Cuban 
situation took a turn which made it virtually 
certain that we would have to interfere sooner or 
later." 

Even at that, interference in Cuba hung fire so 
long that Wood, as well as many others who felt 
deeply that it was our duty to come to the as- 
sistance of the struggling little island, almost gave 
up the hope that Uncle Sam would don the armour 
of a knight errant, and challenge the power of 
Spain. 

When reports from the Klondike, whither thou- 
sands of adventurous young men had flocked 
to make their fortunes, told of the frightful hard- 
ships which the miners were suffering. Captain 
Wood felt that he had at last found a job to suit 
his taste. Here was a chance to combine useful 
service with all sorts of adventures. He was 
then stationed in Washington where he had found 
a man after his own heart, Theodore Roosevelt. 
On the many long tramps which they took around 
Washington Wood tried his utmost to induce 
Roosevelt to join him on a relief expedition to the 
Klondike to save the miners from disease and 
starvation. Nothing but Roosevelt's firm behef 



With Cleveland and McKinley 33 

that there was a bigger job ahead, where their 
country would need their services on the battle- 
field, prevented Wood from leaving for the wilder- 
ness of Alaska. 

It was his marriage that led Leonard Wood 
directly to the great turning point of his career — 
his assignment to W^ashington in 1895, where he 
was destined to form the acquaintance and win 
the close friendship of two of the outstanding 
figures of American history around the close of 
the last century — President Grover Cleveland 
and President William McKinley, and of a third 
man, who was just looming into national prom- 
inence, Theodore Roosevelt. 

Washington, with its social glitter, was most at- 
tractive to a certain type in army and navy offi- 
cialdom. It was an ideal place for officers who 
were blessed with private fortunes, and whose 
wives had social aspirations. Captain Wood was 
inclined to look upon the Capital as a respectable 
morgue for a man in his position, and Mrs. Wood 
had no social ambitions, but she had lived much 
of her life in Washington. Many of her girlhood 
friends and close relatives resided there. She had 
always been a great favourite of her distinguished 
uncle, Mr. Justice Field, and he had often ex- 
pressed the desire that she and her family might 
be near him in his declining years. 



34 The Life of Leonard Wood 

Captain Wood, who had already begun to think 
seriously of doffing his uniform for the overalls 
of a rancher, thought it would make little dif- 
ference whether he spent a year or two in Wash- 
ington before resigning his commission. Life at 
the national Capital might oft'er a pleasant diver- 
sion and bring him in contact with interesting 
figures in public life, and in later years he might 
be able to sketch word pictures of Senator Blank 
and Congressman Blink for the amusement of his 
children. 

There was no private fortune on which to draw. 
Wood had only his captain's salary, and life in 
the Capital was expensive compared with that 
at an army post like Fort McPherson. In view of 
these facts it is doubtful whether he would have 
accepted the Washington appointment if Mrs. 
Wood had not been drawn thither by family and 
friendship ties. His title in Washington was 
that of Assistant Attending Surgeon. He was 
the official physician of the Secretary of War 
and the medical adviser of army officers and their 
families residing in the Capital. The naval sur- 
geons, attending the President and his family, 
might call him into consultation if they felt like so 
doing. 

There was this much to be said for his new post: 
it gave him as a physician a group of distinguished 



With Cleveland and McKinley 35 

clients and brought him into contact with some 
of the country's leading political figures, even if it 
gave him no additional emoluments. On the 
other hand. Wood was thinking of dropping both 
his professions as soldier and physician. 

It has been said of Cleveland that he picked his 
friends with great care and dropped them bluntly 
if they did not measure up to his standards. He 
was finishing his second term when Wood first 
met him. Wood at that time was thirty -five 
years old, hard as nails, physically, his face bronzed 
by his out-of-door life and exercise. Cleveland 
received him kindly and it was evident that he 
liked this stocky, self-reliant army oflScer, for 
soon Wood began to receive calls to the White 
House to attend the Cleveland family. Cleve- 
land found in Wood not only a doctor in whom he 
had confidence, but a kindred spirit. Here was a 
man who knew little of politics and less of society, 
but did know a great deal about shooting and 
fishing, the President's favourite sports. He liked 
to chat with Wood about the latter's Western ex- 
periences, and in turn Wood loved to hear the 
President recall his early career, his political bat- 
tles in New York, and his fishing and hunting 
adventures. 

Wood was one of a party invited by Cleveland 
for a cruise off Cape Hatteras shortly after the 



36 The Life of Leonard Wood 

inauguration of President McKinley. It was a 
delightful vacation. Off duty, Grover Cleveland 
would drop his oflBcial dignity and talk f.^ely of 
men and politics, and now he was a private citizen 
once more, and glad to be rid of the burdens of his 
office. Wood has written the following sketch 
of Grover Cleveland as he appeared on leaving 
office: 

I remember very well his words, as he sat down with 
a sigh of relief, glad that it was all over. He said: "I 
have had a long talk with President McKinley. He is 
an honest, sincere, and serious man. I feel that he is 
going to do his best to give the country a good ad- 
ministration. He impressed me as a man who will have 
the best interest of the people at heart." 

Then he stopped and said with a sigh: "I envy him 
to-day only one thing, and that was the presence of 
his own mother at his inauguration. I would have 
given anything in the world if my mother could have 
been at my inauguration," and then, continuing: "I 
wish him well. He has a hard task," and after a long 
pause: "But he is a good man and will do his best." 

There was one subject in particular where Cleve- 
land and Wood met on a common ground and 
that was in their discussion of the region around 
Buzzards Bay. Here they had both fished and 
hunted, — Wood when he was a boy, and Cleveland, 
when he was the head of the nation, accompanied 



With Cleveland and McKinley 37 

by his old cronies, such as Joe Jefferson, the actor, 
and others. 

As a mle', mihtary officials are little affected by 
changes in the national administration, and after 
McKinley 's arrival in the White House Wood 
found himself occupying relatively the same posi-, 
tion that he had held under Cleveland. He be- 
came one of the attending physicians who watched 
over the invalid wife of President McKinley. As 
his duties took him daily to the White House, he 
soon grew to laiow intimately its new occupants. 
At the same time, life in Washington began to 
assume a new and a more tense aspect. The out- 
look in Cuba was growing serious, and Captain 
Wood was thinking rather less of ranching and 
more of active service for his country. 

Leonard Wood first met Theodore Roosevelt 
at a social function given in the Lowndes house in 
Washington in 1896. Roosevelt was then Assist- 
ant Secretary of the Navy. After a few moments' 
conversation the two discovered that they had 
just missed each other at Harvard. Roosevelt, 
two years older than Wood, had graduated in the 
spring of 1880, Wood had entered in the fall 
of the same year. Both had succumbed to the 
Western fever early in their youth, and both had 
reached middle age with a remarkable similarity 
of views, retaining a clean, boyish enthusiasm for 



38 The Life of Leonard Wood 

sports, athletic games, and all keen physical 
exercise, and a boyish admiration for feats of 
physical strength and prowess. Roosevelt never 
did outgrow this youthful quality. It was this 
gift of the gods which all people who knew him 
loved in him best of all 

They walked home together that night talking 
of the West, of the clean sports to which both were 
devoted, and in the course of that evening began 
a friendship which was to last till the death of 
Roosevelt. 

"Did you and Roosevelt ever have a scrap .'^'* 
General Wood was asked at one time by an im- 
pertinent questioner. 

"Never," was the decisive reply. "No, we 
never had a quarrel. We often disputed. We 
had our differences, but there never was a break 
m our relationship. Our friendship was based 
on our common likes and dislikes. We both 
loved sports and out-of-door life. Roosevelt had 
opportunities which I never had for study and 
travel and exploration. However much I should 
have liked to have done so, I never could devote 
myself to the natural sciences as he did. We were 
in accord in our political views, believing in simple 
and equal justice to all classes. Both of us felt 
particularly strongly on the Cuban situation. We 
felt that it was our duty to free the island from the 



With Cleveland and McKinley 39 

outrageous injustice of Spanish rule, and feeling 
as we did that we should have to intervene sooner 
or later, both of us did all in our power to urge 
preparedness for the struggle. 

"There was very little that I could do, but 
Roosevelt was in a position to do much to prepare 
the navy for the war and he was not found wantmg 
in his duty." 

The friendship of Roosevelt and Wood has no 
parallel in the public life of our country. Both 
were men of great strength of character and con- 
viction, both ardent believers in American de- 
mocracy and institutions, and both possessed that 
quality of picturesqueness which appealed greatly 
to the people of this country. They both came 
from the East, one a New Englander and a de- 
scendant of the people, and the other a New Yorker 
of the aristocratic Dutch stock on his father's side 
and of the aristocratic South on his mother's side; 
and yet they savoured in their speech, their ap- 
pearance, and in their personal and mental habits, 
of the open Western country. It seems curious 
that two men who so often proved their qualities 
of leadership should never clash during the many 
years of their association. 

The explanation lies in the deep respect each 
man had for the other. There is an extremely 
interesting remark of Wood's quoted by members 



40 The Life of Leonard Wood 

of the Harvard Club of New York. Roosevelt 
and Wood were guests of honour at an informal 
affair in the club one night after Roosevelt had 
finished his second term as President. The toast- 
master introduced Wood as the ex-President's 
commanding officer in the Spanish-American War. 
Wood, referring to the days of the Rough Riders, 
said: 

"President Roosevelt was the most subordinate 
subordinate I ever had." 

Roosevelt might have said the same of Wood. 
When he was Commander-in-Chief of the Army 
and Navy, W^ood found no occasion to dispute his 
authority. 

They took it out on each other with single-sticks, 
substitutes for broad-swords, with which they 
fenced; with the boxing gloves, which they often 
put on; in wrestling matches; football scraps, which 
they staged with junior army officers and others 
around the Capital, and in stiff jaunts over the 
hills and valleys near Washington. The spirit 
was always one of jest and good humour, but it 
took a good man to stand up under the blows 
dealt by Wood's right in a boxing match; and 
Roosevelt at play was no gentle gamboling lamb. 

They shared vacant lots about Washington with 
the school youngsters of the city, kicking the foot- 
ball around on autumn afternoons. They made 



With Cleveland and McKinley 41 

brave efforts to ski down hills and ravines which 
barely had enough snow to cover the grass. On 
many of their rambles about the environs of the 
city they were accompanied by their sturdy 
youngsters, for the family ties of both men were 
very strong. They were so nearly matched in/ 
strength that they found an added pleasure id; 
boxing and wrestling. Later, when Roosevelc 
had become President, and Wood famous for his 
Cuban administration, Washington was inclmed 
to pull long faces over their boxing and wrestHng 
bouts. 

Wood to-day admits that it was largely due to 
Roosevelt that he remained in Washington. He 
was bored with the inaction and longed for the 
West. He stood high in his profession as physi- 
cian and surgeon — one of the most honourable of 
professions, but it so happened that he was not 
cast in that mould. His nature required more 
active and strenuous life. Roosevelt was certain 
that the Cuban situation would soon compel the 
United States to act, and urged Wood to defer his 
ranching venture. 

But the President moved cautiously. He had 
served in the Civil War and knew what war was. 
The delay was not without its value for Roosevelt 
and Wood, who had time to mature their plans. 
Before war was declared by an act of Congress they 



42 The Life of Leonard Wood 

had thought of organizing a volunteer regiment 
composed of exceptionally hardy and adventurous 
young men. However, the idea of the Rough 
Riders did not originate until after the declaration 
of war, when it was conceived by United States 
Senator Francis E. Warren of Wyoming. Senator 
Warren proposed that Congress authorize the 
(Organization of three volunteer regiments of 
cavalry to be made up of the wild riders and ad- 
venturers from the Western plains and mountains. 
Congress did so, and Wood immediately made ap- 
phcation for commission as Colonel of one of these 
regiments to be known as the First United States 
Volunteer Cavalry. This was the official name 
of the regiment which soon after its organization 
began was dubbed the Rough Riders. Roosevelt 
was commissioned Lieutenant-Colonel. 

Senator Warren's original idea which made a 
dramatic appeal to the youth of the country was 
only modified to the extent that Wood and Roose- 
velt as leaders of the First Cavalry drew a large 
number of Eastern athletes and sportsmen, college 
men and social leaders, and members of some of 
the best-known families of the land. The com- 
position of the regiment, made up as it was of 
Western cowpunchers, miners, gamblers, Indians, 
and Eastern aristocrats, each one of whom could 
fight his own weiglit in wildcats, made it some- 



With Cleveland and McKinley 43 

what resemble the world-famous French Foreign 
Legion, with the exception that it was thoroughly 
national, thoroughly American. 

There were a few minor hitches in the way. 
Secretary of the Navy John D. Long, under whom 
Roosevelt had served as first assistant, strongly 
objected to his leaving the department, but Roose- 
velt was not the sort of a man to remain in a 
subordinate berth when there were prospects for 
active service in the field. Russell A. Alger, 
Secretary of War, offered Roosevelt the colonelcy 
of a regiment, but as the latter knew little or noth- 
ing of military science, he refused. Fortunately, 
Wood and Roosevelt managed to cut through the 
departmental red tape which came so near strang- 
ling our war preparations in 1898. As a result 
the Rough Riders were the first volunteer regi- 
ment to be ready for the front. 



IV 

COMIMANDER OF THE RoUGH RiDERS 

IN HIS history of the Rough Riders, Roosevelt 
wrote: "We started with the odds in our favour." 

The difficulties in recruiting were of a minus 
quantity, consisting of rejecting men. Wood 
had been in the army long enough to be thoroughly 
conversant with departmental red tape and how to 
avoid it. He knew just what he wanted, and 
knew how to cut comers in obtaining the materials 
he required if it was possible to do so. 

As the official physician of Secretary of War 
Alger, Wood had come to know him intimately 
and win his trust. Alger recognized in him a 
practical military man who had made an excel- 
lent record in the Apache wars. Observing the 
hopeless mass of confusion which existed in the 
War Department, Wood hit upon the plan of go- 
ing to the Secretary of War and requesting a 
carte blanche to go ahead with organizing and 
equipping the regiment. Alger was delighted 
with this arrangement and said : 

44 



Commander of the Rough Riders 45 

"Go right ahead and don't let me hear a word 
from you until your regiment is raised. When 
your requisition and other papers are ready, bring 
them to me to sign, and I'll sign them." 

Armed with this authority, Wood, who knew 
what he needed to equip a cavalry regiment, 
gained a long lead on all of the other volunteer 
units. Wood had seen enough of actual fighting 
to realize how impossible it is to follow to the 
letter all military rules and regulations in war 
times. The regulations called for the use of sa- 
bers by cavalry. It takes a long time to train men 
in the skillful use of sabers and speed was a prime 
necessity at this time.- Moreover, Wood did not 
think that sabers would make a practical weapon 
for volunteers mounted on half-wild Western 
horses. It occurred to him that the machete would 
be a much better weapon to use in Cuba, and he 
knew of a New England firm which manufactured 
these tools for the Cuban sugar fields. So ma- 
chetes were ordered for the Rough Riders. Wood 
wanted Krag-Jorgensen carbines with smokeless 
cartridges, for he expected that his cavalrymen 
might make themselves useful fighting as infantry. 
But the Krags were scarce. Wood knew where 
to go for the few that were in stock without wast- 
ing steps. He went to General Flagler, explaining 
what he had done and telling him that he was in a 



46 The Life of Leonard Wood 

hurry to equip his regiment. General Flagler 
promptly put through the order for him and the 
Rough Riders were fully equipped with weapons 
and ammunition when other organizations had 
neither. 

The War Department was swamped with orders 
for uniforms. When Wood called upon the Quar- 
termaster-General for clothes, he received a curt 
reply, saying that no uniforms were available. 
The answer did not discourage Wood in the least. 

"Our men can wear the ordinary army brown 
canvas working clothes," he said. 

Realizing that most of the drilHng and all of the 
fighting would be done in a warm climate, Wood 
foresaw that the lighter army brown uniforms, 
not so handsome as the regulation blue, would be 
far more serviceable. This proved to be a fact. 
The two innovations introduced by him in equip- 
ping the Rough Riders, the substitution of the 
machete for the saber and of the light working 
uniform for the heavier blue, proved successful. 
The machete was found to be an instrument which 
could be used for all sorts of things, from killing 
Spaniards and cutting cane and underbrush to 
sharpening lead pencils. 

The mustering places of the regiment were in 
New Mexico, Arizona, Oklahoma, and the Indian 
Territory. The response was so heavy that Wood 



Commander of the Rough Riders 47 

and Roosevelt could have raised a brigade or 
division. The number of men allotted to the 
First Volunteer Cavalry was 780 but was soon 
raised to 1,000. 

"We drew recruits from Harvard, Yale, Prince- 
ton, and other colleges; from clubs like the Somer- 
set of Boston and Knickerbocker of New York; 
and from among the men who belonged neither 
to club nor college, but in whose veins the blood 
stirred with the same impulse which once sent the 
Vikings over sea," Theodore Roosevelt wrote in 
his story of the Rough Riders. 

Among the recruits were star football and tennis 
players and other college athletes, such as Dudley 
Dean, Harvard quarterback; Robert Wrenn, 
another quarter, and at that time the champion 
tennis player of the country; Hamilton Fish, cap- 
tain of the Columbia crew; and Woodbury Kane, 
a famous yachtsman and society leader. All of 
these young men enlisted as troopers, took their 
turn at kitchen duty and the other disagreeable 
tasks which devolves on a fighting man. Young 
Wall Street bankers and brokers, who measured 
up to the high physical standard set, abandoned 
their offices and their luxurious homes, just as 
did their sons and nephews in the late war, and 
enlisted, neither seeking nor obtaining preferential 
treatment. 



48 The Life of Leonard Wood 

The mess mates and buddies of these Eastern 
aristocrats were broncho busters and cowboys 
from the Southwest, Texas Rangers and Western 
sheriffs and deputy sheriffs, bear and buffalo 
hunters from the Rocky Mountain regions, Chero- 
kees, Chickasaws, Choctaws, and Creeks from the 
Indian Territory. Some of the recruits were 
veterans of Indian wars, and all of them were 
imbued with that spirit of patriotism and adventure 
which characterized the leaders of the regiment. 
All of them were, of course, crack horsemen and 
crack shots. There was no diJSicultj^ in finding 
competent officers. Most of the captains and 
lieutenants had served in the regular army and had 
resigned their commissions to enter civil life. 
Most of them knew Colonel Wood or Lieutenant- 
Colonel Roosevelt personally. Two were West 
Pointers. They were excellent drill masters and 
had seen enough of the Far West to know just how 
to handle the rough material before them and 
develop it into a disciplined unit. To accomplish 
this without fight and bloodshed required no less 
tact than military skill. No officer could afford 
to assume an overbearing attitude toward these 
free-born Westerners who were unacquainted with 
army regulations and customs. Roosevelt tells of 
one rangy recruit from the Southwest who dropped 
into Colonel Wood's tent one evening and said: 



Commander of the Rough Riders 49 

"Well, Colonel, I want to shake hands with you 
and say we're with you. We didn't know how we 
would like you fellers at first, but you're all right 
and you know your business, and you mean busi- 
ness, and you can count on us every time." 

"The faults they committed were those of 
ignorance merely," Roosevelt writes. "When 
Holderman, the cook, in announcing dinner for the 
Colonel and the three Majors, genially remarked, 
*If you fellers don't come soon everything will get 
cold,' he had no thought of other than a kindly and 
respectful regard for their welfare, and was glad 
to modify his form of address on being told that it 
was not what could be described as conventionally 
military." 

Whatever may be the world record in organizing 
and drilling a regiment to the point where it 
could give good account of itself in an engagement 
with veteran troops, it is safe to say that the record 
of Wood and Roosevelt in whipping the Rough 
Riders into shape would stand near the top. The 
United States declared war on Spain April 26, 
1898, and on May 29th the Rough Riders left their 
training camp at San Antonio, Texas, and boarded 
trains for Tampa, Florida, to be transported to 
Cuba. 

In thirty -three days the commander of the regi- 
ment and his able and strenuous Lieutenant- 



50 The Life of Leonard Wood 

Colonel recruited, organized, ojQBcered, and equip- 
ped 1,000 men and they had given the soldiers 
enough drilling to enable them to win the greatest 
fame of any single regiment in the Spanish-Amer- 
ican War. The Rough Riders received only 
twenty-one days of actual drilling. \Mien we 
recall what a hopeless muddle the War Depart- 
ment was in at the time, it must be admitted that 
to find clothing, arms, ammunition, and mounts 
for a regiment in about a month's time was in it- 
self something of an achievement. The state of 
affairs in the War Department is best illustrated 
by the following story which Wood loves to tell: 

"A certain high military officer in Washington 
whom I met one day was much upset by the sud- 
den war activity, and remarked: 'Here I had a 
magnificent system; my office and department 
were in good working order, and this damned war 
comes along and breaks it all up.' " 

The high officer, who made this amusing re- 
mark, was talking to the right man. Wood did 
as much as anybody to break up the obsolete 
bureaucratic system of the War Department for 
the inefficiency of which Secretary of War Alger 
received perhaps more than his due share of the 
blame. 

The journey from, San Antonio to Tampa took 
four days. At the latter place, or rather at Port 



Commander of the Rough Riders 51 

Tampa, where the troops embarked, Wood showed 
his usual resourcefulness in securing a transport. 
This service was in the same mess as everything 
else. After the Yucatan, lying in midstream, had 
been allotted to the Rough Riders, Wood and 
Roosevelt discovered accidentally that this ship 
had been assigned to two other regiments waiting 
to embark. Wood immediately seized a launch, 
boarded the ship and took possession, while Roose- 
velt rounded up the regiment and marched it at 
double-quick to the quay, just in time to board 
the vessel ahead of the other two regiments. 

It is not the purpose of this narrative to relate 
once more the often-told story of the Rough Riders. 
The regiment landed in Cuba June 22d under the 
protection of shellfire from American war vessels, 
and on the day following came the order to ad- 
vance. The Battle of Las Guasimas took place 
on June 24th, the Rough Riders under Wood's 
command occupying the left wing of the American 
forces. 

"When the firing opened some of the men began 
to curse," Roosevelt writes. "'Don't swear — 
shoot!' growled Wood, as he strode along the path 
leading his horse, and everyone laughed and be- 
came cool again. The Spanish outposts were very 
near our advance guard and some minutes of the 
hottest kind of firing followed before they were 



52 The Life of Leonard Wood 

driven back and slipped off through the jmigle to 
their main Hnes in the rear." 

Later, in his description of the action, Roosevelt 
writes : 

When I came to the front I found the men spread out 
in a very thin skirmish line, advancing through com- 
paratively open ground, each man taking advantage of 
what cover he could while Wood strolled about leading 
his horse. . . . How Wood escaped being hit I 
do not see and still less how his horse escaped. 

Major-General Joseph WTieeler, in command of 
the cavalry troops at Las Guasimas, made the fol- 
lowing official report on the Rough Riders : 

Colonel Wood's regiment was on the extreme left 
of tlie line and too far distant for me to be a personal 
witness of the individual conduct of his officers and 
men; but the magnificent and brave work done by the 
regiment under the lead of Colonel Wood testifies to 
his courage and skill. The energy and determination 
of this officer had been marked from the moment he 
reported to me at Tampa, Florida, and I have abundant 
evidence of his brave and good conduct on the field and 
I recommend him for consideration of the Government. 

On June 25 th, Brigadier-General S. B. M.Young, 
who had played a distinguished part in the Battle 
of Las Guasimas, went down with the fever. Gen- 
eral Wheeler thereupon advanced Wood to fill the 



Commander of the Rough Riders 53 

vacancy. Henceforth, throughout the siege of San- 
tiago, he was in command of the Second Cavalry 
Brigade, serving dismounted. This left Roosevelt 
in command of the Rough Riders. The promo- 
tion of Wood and Roosevelt was confirmed soon 
afterward. 

In an official report dated June 29th, Brigadier- 
General Young, whose illness hastened Wood's 
promotion, wrote: 

I cannot speak too highly of the eflBcient manner in 
which Colonel Wood handled his regiment and of his 
magnificent behaviour on the field. The conduct 
of Lieutenant-Colonel Roosevelt, as reported to me 
by my two aides, deserves my highest commendation. 
Both Colonel Wood and Lieutenant-Colonel Roosevelt 
disdained to take advantage of shelter or cover from the 
enemy's fire while any of their men remained exposed 
to it — an error of judgment, but happily on the heroic 
side. 

Methods in warfare have changed. To-day 
General Wood probably would regretfully repri- 
mand an officer who exposed himself in battle 
unless it was absolutely necessary. In the Span- 
ish-American War the old tradition prevailed that 
an officer must at all times show utter disregard 
for danger and thus set an example of heroism. 

There has been much dispute as to what the 
Rough Riders under Wood actually accomplished 



54 The Life of Leonard Wood 

in the first engagement at Las Guasimas. Ever 
since the Spanish-American War we have often 
heard it said that the great reputation of the regi- 
ment was made by newspaper correspondents and 
by the prestige which later attached to the name 
of Theodore Roosevelt. 

As a further testimony of the gallant behaviour 
of the regiment and of Wood's quahty as an officer, 
the following extract from a heretofore unpublished 
letter written by the late Richard Harding Davis 
to his brother, Charles Belmont Davis, two days 
after the Battle of Las Guasimas and dated, "In 
Sight of Santiago, June 26, 1898," may be of in- 
terest : 

General Chaffee told me to-day that it was Wood's 
charge that won the day. Without it the Tenth could 
not have driven the Spanish back. Wood is a great 
young man. He has only one idea, or rather all his 
ideas run in one direction, his regiment. He eats and 
talks nothing else. He never sleeps more than four 
hours and all. the rest of the time he is moving about 
among the tents. 



The Rescuer op Santiago 

IN ALL of history there is no parallel to the 
service rendered by the United States in Cuba. 
This is not a boast; it is simply a fact. Nations 
have come to the aid of sister nations in time of 
need and have shed their blood to expel foreign 
foes or crush native tyrants. But the rescuer 
generally has remained as sovereign or has de- 
manded and received a price in cash or trade con- 
cessions. Sometimes the rescuer has fought be- 
cause his own interests were jeopardized through 
the invasion of a neighbouring nation's territory. 

Great Britain restored peace and some degree 
of security and prosperity in Egypt and India 
when these countries were committing suicide 
through internal warfare and misrule; but the 
British flag still flies in Egypt and India. Both 
countries may have been benefited as a whole 
through British occupation, but England has lost 
nothing on the transaction. 

Sweden during the Thirty Years' War came to 

55 



56 The Life of Leonard Wood 

the rescue of the Protestant states of Germany; 
but the Swedes, who entered Germany as cham- 
pions of the Reformation, remained as conquerors 
on German territory till they were driven out. 

The United States not only freed Cuba from 
Spain, but saved her from the tropical pestilences 
and filth diseases which were decimating the 
population, restored her civil and commercial 
institutions, founded her public school system, re- 
organized her laws and her courts, then established 
her as an independent republic. 

And the chief instrument of the United States 
in this monumental labour — the finest service 
ever rendered by one nation to another — was Gen- 
eral Leonard Wood. 

The most remarkable feature of his success in 
Cuba is the fact that General Wood entered on his 
duties there utterly untrained in administrative 
affairs; yet in summarizing his qualifications for 
his post, Ray Stannard Baker wrote as follows in 
McClure's Magazine in 1900: 

There are not many men in this or any other country 
who could have gone into the Santiago of August, 1898, 
with its thousands of dead and dying, its reeking filth, 
its starvation, its utter prostration, and made of it in 
four months' time a clean, healthy, and orderly city. 
Another soldier might,have been chosen who could have 
preserved order as well as did General Wood; a lawyer 



The Rescuer of Santiago 57 

might have organized the judicial system, and a physi- 
cian reestabhshed the hospitals; but it would not have 
been easy to find another man with the varied material 
equipment and the requisite physical endurance to 
serve in a tropical country as a lawmaker, judge, and 
governor, all in one; to build roads and sewers, to 
establish hospitals; to organize a school system, and 
devise a scheme of finance; to deal amicably with a 
powerful church influence, and yet to appear, in spite of 
such autocracy, the most popular man in the province. 

Writing in the Harvard Graduates^ Magazine 
in 1902, Theodore Roosevelt said: 

Leonard Wood four years ago went down to Cuba, 
has served there ever since, has rendered services to 
that country of the kind which if performed three 
thousand years ago would have made him a hero mixed 
up with the Sun God in various ways; a man who devoted 
his whole life through those four years, who thought of 
nothing else, did nothing else, save to try to bring up 
the standard of political and social life in that Island, to 
teach the people after four centuries of misrule that there 
were such things as governmental righteousness and 
honesty and fair play for all men on their merits as men. 

Some years later, after Wood had finished his 
Philippine mission and had become Chief-of-Staff 
under President Taft, Colonel Roosevelt wrote 
of him in The Outlook: 

Like almost all of the men mentioned, as well as their 
colleagues, General Wood of course incurred the violent 



58 The Life of Leonard Wood 

hatred of many dishonest schemers and miscrupulous 
adventurers, and of a few more or less well-meaning 
persons who were misled by these schemers and ad- 
venturers; but it is astounding to any one acquainted 
with the facts to realize, not merely what he accom- 
plished, but how he succeeded in gaining the good will 
of the enormous majority of the men whose good will 
could be won only in honourable fashion. Spaniards 
and Cubans, Christian Filipinos and Moros, Catholic 
ecclesiastics and Protestant missionaries — in each case 
the great majority of those whose opinion was best 
worth having — grew to regard General Wood as their 
i special champion and ablest friend, as the man who 
more than any others understood and sympathized 
with their peculiar needs and was anxious and able to 
render them the help they most needed. In Cuba he 
acted practically as both civil and military head; and 
after he had been some time in the Philippines, very 
earnest pressure was brought to bear by many of the 
best people in the Islands to have a similar position 
there created for him, so that he could repeat what 
he had done in Cuba. It was neither necessary nor 
desirable that this position should be created; but the 
widely expressed desire that it should be created was 
significant of the faith in the man. 

His administration was as signally successful in the 
Moro country as in Cuba. In each case alike it brought 
in its train peace, an increase in material prosperity, 
and a rigid adlierence to honesty as the only policy 
tolerated among officials. His opportunity for military 
service has not been great, either in the Philippines or 
while he was the Governor of Cuba. Still, on several 
occasions he was obliged to carry on operations against 



The Rescuer of Santiago 59 

hostile tribes of Moros, and in each case he did his work 
with skill, energy, and efficiency; and, once he was done,, 
he showed as much humanity in dealing with the van- 
quished as he had shown capacity to vanquish them. 
In our country there are some kinds of success which 
receive an altogether disproportionate financial reward; 
but in no other country is the financial reward so small 
for the kind of service done by Leonard Wood and by 
the other men whose names I have given above. Gen- 
eral Wood is an army officer with nothing but an army 
officer's pay, and we accept it as a matter of course that 
he should have received practically no pecuniary re- 
ward for those services which he rendered in positions 
not such as an army officer usually occupies. There 
is not another big country in the world where he would 
not have received a substantial reward such as here 
no one even thinks of his receiving. Yet, after all, 
the reward for which he most cares is the opportunity 
to render service, and this opportunity has been given 
him once and again. He now stands as Chief-of-Staff 
of the American Army, the army in which he was serv- 
ing in a subordinate position as surgeon thirteen years 
ago. His rise has been astonishing, and it has been due 
purely to his own striking qualifications and striking 
achievements. Again and again he has rendered great 
service to the American people; and he will continue 
to render such service in the position he now holds. 

On July 20th, three days after the Americans had 
entered the city of Santiago, General Wood was 
summoned by General Shafter in command of 
the American forces, and ordered to take command 



CO The Life of Leonard Wood 

of the city. This was a turning point in General 
Wood's career. For twelve years he had served 
as army surgeon and line officer. For the next 
ten years he was to combine the duties of a general 
officer and military governor. He was plunged 
into the most difficult of positions where he had to 
serve without any previous training as governmetit 
executive, bring order out of disorder, and create a 
government as he went along. 

It is difficult at this time to visualize the handi- 
cap and the trials which beset General Wood 
when he became Military Governor of Santiago 
de Cuba. He was just thirty-seven years old. 
A few months before he had been living the pleas- 
ant and orderly life of any army surgeon in Wash- 
ington with the most distinguished patients in the 
country. His clients had been President McKin- 
ley, Mrs. McKinley, and army officers of high 
rank and their families. But he had no more 
experience as a statesman than he had as an 
aviator. Outside of his interest as a good citizen 
in good government he knew little of govern- 
mental affairs. 

*'I had never held any office of any sort," said 
General Wood. "The army offered no training 
for the duties which might devolve on a military- 
governor, but I had read a whole lot of British 
colonial history, so I was not wholly without 



The Rescuer of Santiago 61 

guidance. I met each problem that came up and 
tried to solve it to the best of my ability." 

General Shafter selected Leonard Wood because 
he had made good in the Southwest, because 
President McKinley trusted him, because he had 
shown great organizing and executive ability in the 
late campaign, because he had always throughout 
his career shown a passion for unselfish, patriotic 
service, and finally, because he was a doctor, and 
Cuba was mighty sick. 

When General Wood entered on his duties, 
Santiago was a city of a thousand desperate needs. 
Here was a community of 50,000 inhabitants, more 
than 15,000 of whom were sick. It had just gone 
through a siege, so that most of the population was 
starving. In addition to the sick among the civil 
population there were 2,000 Spanish soldiers 
bedridden within the city, and 5,000 American 
troops suffering from malarial fevers. 

In an orderly community with its governmental 
machinery intact and its supply of life necessities 
normal, an epidemic which prostrated one fourth 
of the population would result in a panic and wild 
appeals for outside help. But in addition to being 
sick, Santiago was starving. Its food supply had 
disappeared into the cellars of hoarders and ware- 
houses of profiteers. During the siege its sources 
of supply had been cut off. 



62 The Life of Leonard Wood 

Under Spanish rule the city had been notorious 
for its uncleanKness. "You could smell it ten 
miles at sea," said an old sea captain to an Amer- 
ican oflScer of General Wood's staff, and now it 
was worse than ever. 

The water supply was polluted, inadequate in 
volume, a sure breeder of typhoid, from which the 
city had never been free throughout its history. 
The swamps in the neighbourhood of Santiago 
breathed a miasma of malaria from which no 
foreigner was immune. 

An experienced organizer and executive, invested 
with dictatorial powers and having under his 
command a trained staff of medical officers and 
sanitation experts, an efficient army to maintain 
order and carry out his instructions, and plenty 
of food and medical supplies, might have found it 
a hard but not an impossible task to clean up 
Santiago, restore the community to health, and 
establish order. But General Wood had no such 
equipment. He himself was a raw recruit as a 
municipal officer. He was short of doctors, and 
drugs had to be transported from the United 
States. When it came to the army, his handicap 
was rendered even more complex. The army was 
sick. At first General Wood's assignment to 
Santiago seemed quite hopeless. 

It has been estimated that less than one per 



The Rescuer of Santiago 63 

cent, of the American troops stationed in and 
around Santiago escaped malaria. It was this 
disease which raised the greatest havoc with our 
troops. The mortahty was not so high, but a 
soldier subject to malaria might as well be dead 
as alive, so far as his military usefulness is con- 
cerned, the fever being recurrent. A man would 
be very sick for a few days, then he would partially 
recover and be able to go on duty; then he would 
be struck down again. In the course of these 
attacks the strength of the strongest and toughest 
trooper would be sapped so that he had little re- 
serve vitality with which to fight off other ills. 

The pitiable condition of our troops had been 
rendered worse by a curious incident which to-day, 
in view of the rigid censorship that was main- 
tained on all military information during the great 
war, seems almost grotesque. Alarmed at the 
high percentage of sickness among the troops, 
the general officers of the army in Cuba addressed 
a "Round Robin" to Major-General Shafter 
stating that "the army must be moved at once or 
it will perish." Accompanying the "Round 
Robin" was a succinct statement from the chief 
medical officers attesting to the danger from ma- 
laria and other tropical diseases. 

It has often been said that war correspondents 
ran the Spanish-American War. In this particular 



64 The Life of Leonard Wood 

case Washington read the details of the "Round 
Robin" in the newspapers before receiving any 
official statement from the commanding officer. 
General Shafter, on receiving a curt letter from 
Secretary of War Alger criticizing the "Round 
Robin," explained that it had been given to the 
newspapermen before he saw it. The effect of the 
incident was to create what might be called a near 
panic at home and a bitter unrest among the 
soldiers in Cuba, adding materially to the labours 
of every American officer in the island and the 
ill-temper of the authorities in Washington. 

Secretary Alger in his history of the Spanish- 
American War denies that the War Department 
was influenced in the least by the "Round Robin." 
Nevertheless, the veterans of the Santiago cam- 
paign, with the exception of those infected with the 
yellow fever or those showing symptoms of infec- 
tion, were removed late in August, 1899, to rest 
billets at Montauk Point, Long Island. They were 
replaced by green troops who arrived at the height 
of the unhealthful season, causing fresh anxiety to 
all the commanding officers. 

At least some of the older troops had become 
acclimated and used to conditions in the island, 
and no doubt General Wood's task of saving Santi- 
ago from starvation and disease would have been 
lightened if these veterans had been retained. The 



The Rescuer of Santiago 65 

Fifth Army Corps was suffering principally from 
the effects of the Santiago campaign. The men 
had been wallowing in mud and water in the yel- 
low fever country for weeks, and had, of course, 
been thoroughly infected with malaria. It was 
thought that the new troops, recruited mostly 
from the Southern states and supposed to be 
immune from malaria, would fare better with im- 
proved tentage and general living conditions. But 
as General Wood later testified before the War 
Investigation Committee, the identical troubles 
suffered by the troops during the campaign ap- 
peared among the new and supposedly immune 
army living in tents with floors, drinking boiled 
water, and rigidly maintaining all the sanitary 
precautions prescribed by the army doctors. 

General Wood began his labours in Santiago with 
sick troops, veterans of a few weeks on the island,, 
and he continued his work with sick green troops. 
As he told the War Investigation Committee, 
"All the 'immune' regiments serving in my de- 
partment since the war have been at one time or 
another unfit for service. I have had all the 
officers of my staff repeatedly too sick for duty." 

In spite of these handicaps, the young New 
England army doctor stuck to his job. Although 
in perfect physical condition when he landed in 
Cuba, hardened and toughened by a decade of 



66 The Life of Leonard Wood 

Indian fighting and life in the open, General Wood 
did not escape malaria or yellow fever. In the 
midst of his work in Santiago he was taken ill 
with the latter disease, which had in those days a 
record of killing four out of five victims, but Gen- 
eral Wood was the fifth. Later, when he was 
Governor of the island, he contracted typhoid 
fever while inspecting the hospitals of Havana, but 
again his iron constitution saved him. 

Another obstacle in the way of the new military 
governor was his limited knowledge of the Spanish 
race and language. There were available only a 
few Americans who could speak Spanish well and 
a still fewer number of Cubans who could speak 
English. "I had picked up a smattering of 
Spanish while serving down on the Mexican bor- 
der," he said, "but I required the services of an 
interpreter on all ofiicial business." 

Perhaps the worst barrier of all was the profound 
distrust on the part of the Cuban people of all 
foreigners, a distrust instilled for generations into 
their minds by Spain's representatives in the 
island. The laws of the land, fundamentally 
sound, had been so administered as to deprive the 
average Cuban of all respect for law and authority. 
He knew nothing of honest government or honest 
administration. In consequence, his civic training 
had consisted of learning how to evade the law and 



Tlie Rescuer of Santiago 67 

cheat officials. Neither his property nor that of 
any of his ancestors, so far as he knew, had ever 
been safe from seizure. He and his ancestors 
had always lived in fear of arrest and persecution 
by officials whose authority was absolute, and most 
of whom seemed to be swayed by the old Spanish 
caste prejudice against the colonial born-and-bred 
subjects of Spain. 

General Wood could hardly expect much civic 
cooperation from such people. Along with all 
the rest of the work piled on him Jie had to win 
the confidence of the natives, demonstrate to them 
that although he was an official, he was an honest 
man from whom they did not have to hide what 
little property they owned, and that he looked 
upon them as free men and women, endowed with 
personal rights which he and all good Americans 
held sacred. 

When he rode into Santiago, Wood encountered 
dead bodies of men and of animals lying in the 
streets. Every thoroughfare was piled with dirt 
and broken furniture and other household uten- 
sils. The city had no sewer system, and here 
and there the open drains had been blocked by the 
corpse of a human being or an animal. Over the 
city hovered a multitude of vultures, and it was 
no uncommon sight to see one of these carrion 
birds sweep down to feed on carcasses. Scores 



68 The Life of Leonard Wood 

of houses were deserted except for the dead bodies 
they contained. For days there had been no 
attempt made by the people to bury their dead. 
The Hving were too sick, too demorahzed by 
the long and savage struggle of the revolution 
culminating in the siege, to attend to such ele- 
mental duties. Over this dead and dying city 
there hung the paralyzing fear that at any moment 
its suffering might be intensified by the recurrent 
epidemics of yellow fever, small-pox, or the bu- 
bonic plague. Never did Hercules himself essay 
a worse cleaning job than that which lay before 
the American soldier-doctor. 

The first tasks before General Wood were to feed 
the population and bury the dead. During the 
siege thousands of women, children, and other 
non-combatants had been permitted to leave the 
city and pass through the American lines to El 
Caney where they were given assistance by the 
American troops and the Red Cross in securing 
food and shelter. Now these refugees were strag- 
gling back into the city, having utterly no means 
of subsistence. 

There were so many dead that it was found 
impracticable to bury them. The bodies were col- 
lected in lots of fifty to a hundred, soaked in 
petroleum, and burned outside the city limits. 
It was horrible work; and men had to be forced to 



The Rescuer of Santiago 69 

perform it. But there were many idle and desti- 
tute men in Santiago, and all of them possessed 
the natural desire to fill their hungry stomachs 
and earn a little money, if they were not too sick 
to eat and work. These were drafted to clean up 
the city under the direction of American troops. 
Sometimes they had to be driven by threats into 
houses to collect the bodies. 

Wood's men worked night and day in the streets 
collecting the dead animals, cleaning away the 
filth that had accumulated there for months, and 
carting everything out beyond the city limits to 
be soaked in oil and burned. General Wood and 
his army had more or less literally come into 
the city armed with shovels, scrub brushes, and 
disinfectants. Houses and streets and vaults were 
cleansed by native labour directed by short- 
tempered American soldiers who were full of 
quinine and uncomplimentary remarks about 
army life in Cuba. 

We may recall in this connection that architec- 
turally most Latin-American cities are unlike our 
cities. Our yards surround our houses. In San- 
tiago the houses surrounded the yards. Wliat each 
courtyard contained was the private alGFair of the 
owner, and its state of sanitation depended en- 
tirely on his standard of cleanliness. The Amer- 
icans found these private courtyards depositories 



70 The Life of Leonard Wood 

of garbage; and into many of these premises the 
Americans had to force their way. 

There was this consoHng aspect to the whole 
discouraging business: the people were to a cer- 
tain extent inured to their misery. They were 
used to dirt, used to hunger, used to disease. The 
natives were a race of tough survivors. 

The cleansing process was followed by hberal 
applications of corrosive sublimate solution. Even 
the streets were sprinkled with disinfectants. In- 
side of four months Santiago was probably the 
cleanest city in tropical America. It smelled to 
heaven of disinfectants, but it was clean. 

The problem of supplying food for the popula- 
tion appeared at first impossible of solution. Tliere 
was little or no food in sight in Santiago when the 
Americans entered on July 17th. Within a few 
days the Americans had disclosed hoards of provi- 
sions here and there. Moreover, the Spanish army, 
which had now surrendered, had stocked up large 
quantities for rations. This food was available 
for distribution among the civihan population 
while the regular channels of trade communication 
were being opened. The people of Santiago suf- 
fered little from hunger after the Americans took 
charge. 

Henry Harrison Lewis, in an article pubhshed 
in McClure's Magazine when General Wood was in 



The Rescuer of Santiago 71 

command at Santiago, tells an incident which in 
these days of high prices is timely and which dur- 
ing the palmiest days of the food profiteers who 
flourished in this country throughout the great 
war, in spite of Federal regulations, would have 
been timelier still. General Wood knew food 
profiteers in Santiago twenty-one years ago, and 
in spite of his inexperience in dealing with such 
persons, immediately hit upon an effective plan 
to regulate prices. His officers reported to him 
that merchants in Santiago had considerable 
quantities of meat and other food, but that the 
prices were so high that the food was beyond the 
reach of but few persons. He sent at once for the 
principal butchers of the city. 

*'How much do you charge for meat.^*" Wood 
asked the butchers. 

"Ninety cents a pound, Senor." 

"What does it cost you.^*" 

There was hesitation and shuffling of feet; then 
one of the men said in a whining voice: 

"Meat is very dear, your Excellency.'* 

"How much a pound?" 

"Fifteen cents, your Excellency; but we have 
lost much money during the war and " 

"So have your customers. Now meat will 
be sold at twenty-five cents a pound, and not one 
cent more. Do you understand.'^" 



72 The Life of Leonard Wood 

Wood then turned to the Cuban Aldermen who 
were present and charged them with looking after 
the enforcement of the order on pain of being 
expelled from office. Thereafter meat was sold 
in the markets at twenty -five cents. The same 
simple plan was evolved for all other kinds of sup- 
plies. It took Leonard Wood only a few minutes 
to solve the high cost of living problem in San- 
tiago. He used no more arbitrary methods than 
were proposed and attempted by the allied coun- 
tries during the laic war. But he enforced his 
decree to the letter despite the opposition which 
some of his acts aroused. There was plenty of 
criticism, for Wood had unmuzzled the press of 
Santiago for the first time in Cuban history. Wood 
has never been a believer in censorship. 

To one who has read the official records of the 
occupation of Cuba it seems that Wood started 
a hundred diflterent projects during his first few 
weeks as Military Governor. It is remarkable 
that he was able to carry through within the short 
period allotted more than a few of these ventures. 
But all his plans for the betterment of the city and 
province seemed to develop in a rapid yet orderly 
fashion. It is true that he was given a free hand. 
Nevertheless, no one but a man of great executive 
and organizing ability could have guided the re- 
habilitation work and pushed it to a completion. 



The Rescuer of Santiago 73 

He launched an engineering project for draining 
the malarial swamps in the neighbourhood of the 
city; increased the city's water supply; paved 
streets and built roads; established municipal 
governments throughout the province; organized 
pack-train service into the interior; recruited and 
trained Cuban rural guards to suppress brigandage 
and maintain order; reestablished the courts, ap- 
pointing native judges and prosecutors; founded 
public schools ; and by opening the customs houses, 
collecting duty, and improvising means for local 
taxation, paid for all these improvements. He 
was already teaching a part of Cuba to stand on 
its own feet. 

This reconstruction programme was begun by 
Wood as soon as the emergency work of cleaning 
the city, disposing of the bodies of the dead, and 
providing for the food supplies had been ac- 
complished. In a general way he followed the 
plan of submitting his various schemes for the 
civic betterment to the native ofl&cials and winning 
their consent and cooperation in whatever he 
undertook. 

There were no municipal officials to consult. 
When he took office Wood found himself a ruler 
over the ruins of a civilization. The civilization 
which grand old Spain had planted in the island 
had been crumbling for generations under the 



74 The Life of Leonard Wood 

regime of the Spanish bureaucrats and Military 
Governors who, by their incompetence and cor- 
ruption, had played the roles of traitors to their 
native land which had honoured them with posi- 
tions of trust and dignity. 

The American occupation of Cuba began with 
the occupation of Santiago province. Prior to the 
transfer of the island to the United States on 
January 1, 1899, the territory occupied by the 
United States military forces was hmited to this 
province and some adjacent territory. Leonard 
Wood's jurisdiction,, which at first covered only 
the city of Santiago, was soon extended to 
include all of this territory occupied by the 
Americans up to the time of the Peace Conference 
of Paris. 

All the municipalities in Santiago province 
were practically in the same mess as the city of 
Santiago; all the towns and cities had to be cleaned 
out, and strict sanitary regulations imposed. 
There was no government worthy of the name 
functioning in any of these communities. 

One of General Wood's first tasks, therefore, 
was to build up a semblance of civil government 
in the various communities. There was no gen- 
eral election law, as we understand it, on the Cuban 
statute books; so Wood improvised a scheme for 
filling the necessary public offices, whereby the 



The Rescuer of Santiago 75 

Cubans themselves would have the principal voice 
in choosing their leaders. 

He would summon fifty or sixty leading men of 
a community, representing all classes, and ask 
them to submit a list of men whom they considered 
competent and honest enough to serve as munici- 
pal officers. From this list he would make his 
appointments. He would then lay down his in- 
structions to the new officials, charge them with 
maintaining law and order and enforcing the 
sanitary regulations promulgated by the Amer- 
icans. He would tell them that they had the 
backing of the American army in discharging their 
duties, and he never failed to make it plain that 
they would have to attend to business and serve 
their constituents to the best of their ability, or 
they would find themselves without jobs. 

General Wood established courts throughout the 
province, appointing judges and prosecutors. He 
was gradually building up a civilized state on the 
ruins of the old Spanish crown colony. The 
hospitals had to be renovated, and the jails cleaned 
out, and human regulations substituted for the ir- 
regular prison rule which prevailed. 

Santiago's prisons were indescribable. They 
were filled with political prisoners and other of- 
fenders whose condition was pitiable in the ex- 
treme. Investigation of charges against prisoners 



76 The Life of Leonard Wood 

revealed that many of them had been thrown into 
jail by the Spanish authorities without any valid 
reason. For instance, General Wood found one 
man in a Santiago prison who had been held there 
for ten years. There was no charge against him 
and the prison ojBBcials explained that he was 
simply being held "at the will of the Governor 
General." Further inquiry revealed that a former 
Spanish Governor General had ordered the man 
arrested for some trivial offence, the exact nature 
of which was never discovered. He had never 
been tried, and the oflScial who had ordered his 
arrest had left for Spain many years ago. Scores 
of illegally held prisoners were released and Gen- 
eral Wood issued strict orders that every person 
arrested must be given trial within twenty-four 
hours. 

Many years before the Americans came to free 
Cuba a Spanish municipal architect had con- 
ceived a plan for a beautiful boulevard along the 
water front in Santiago. The work had been 
practically finished except for the laying of a 
permanent pavement. The boulevard was now 
rutted and in an ill state of repair, as were most 
of the thoroughfares in the city. General Wood 
submitted to the civil authorities of Santiago the 
necessity for paved streets, and with their consent 
started an ambitious programme of street im- 



The Rescuer of Santiago 77 

provements for which native labour was employed. 
The marine boulevard was transformed into an 
avenue of beauty of which any city might have 
been proud. Being a military man with a most 
wholesome respect for good roads, and realizing, 
moreover, the vital necessity for them in a country 
depending entirely on agriculture. General Wood 
projected a system of rural highway building. The 
Spanish had made some efforts at road building 
in the vicinity of Santiago. WTiat astonished 
the Cubans most of all was that under the Amer- 
ican Mihtary Governor roads could be built superior 
to those built by the Spanish and for about half 
the price. 

Many an executive placed in Wood's position 
might have sent his own troops into the rural 
districts to wipe out or capture the brigands who 
flourished there, making it virtually impossible 
for people to resume their peaceful pursuits of 
agriculture. Now some of these outlaws had at 
some time fought for Cuba, and to send American 
soldiers to fight them might have precipitated 
serious trouble. Besides, American soldiers were 
not fit for such duty. They would have suc- 
cumbed to the tropical fevers from which the 
Cuban bandits were immune. General Wood 
recognized these facts and organized the rural 
guards of Cubans, drilled and armed them, and 



78 TJie Life of Leonard Wood 

sent them forth to fight their own outlaws. "Let 
the Cubans kill their own rats," said the General. 
This proved both eflScacious and satisfactory. 

There was no public school system in Cuba, 
instruction being left to private institutions. 
Wood devoutly believed then, as he still does, that 
public education is the cornerstone of every free 
state. After the cities had been cleaned up, the 
epidemics checked, and the Spanish troops, pris- 
oners of war, had been sent home, he turned his 
attention to the schools. When he took command 
of all of Cuba, Wood had opened nearly two hun- 
dred schools in Santiago province in charge of 
Cuban teachers, the expenses being paid from 
pubhc revenue. 

The methods used in effecting this rehabilita- 
tion did not savour much of the military dictator 
as the following example shows. Throughout 
its history Santiago had never had an adequate 
water supply and now it was about one fourth 
of what the city daily required. The water came 
from a dam up in the hills which was always break- 
ing. The water was none too good in quality, and 
Santiago was suffering from typhoid. Wood, 
being invested with the powers of a dictator, could 
have ordered another dam built at the expense of 
the city. Instead of so doing, he called a meeting 
of the civil oflBcials, explained to them the vital 



The Rescuer of Santiago 79 

need for an increased and purer water supply, 
showed them blueprints of a new dam prepared 
by American engineers, and asked their approval 
for raising $100,000 by a bond issue to pay for the 
work. The city fathers, by a vote, authorized the 
bond issue and the dam was built. 

It was in the matter of issuing and enforcing 
health decrees that Wood exercised all the power 
of his office. He decreed that all cases of sick- 
ness and death must be immediately reported to 
the Military Government. Violation of this 
edict meant jail and fine. As a result the death 
rate in Santiago fell in four months from two hun- 
dred per day to ten per day. 

Having made a fair start toward restoring an 
orderly government. General Wood promulgated 
a Bill of Rights giving the residents of Santiago 
the right to carry arms, hold public meetings, and 
do virtually all things permitted to people under a 
free and democratic government. 

The captain of an army transport during the 
Spanish- American War gave the following account 
of General Wood's progress in cleaning up San- 
tiago : 

"When we first sailed into Santiago Harbour, 
late in July or early in August, '98, there were 
thousands and thousands of buzzards hovering 
over the city and the water. It seemed to me that 



80 The Life of Leonard Wood 

the sky was full of them. In the summer of 1899 
there was quite a number of them soaring over the 
town. Old yellow jack had broken out again, and 
things looked rather discouraging for General 
Wood and his men. 

"But in the following summer of 1900 we sailed 
into the harbour one afternoon, and I recall that 
one of my officers remarked: 'Well, sir, there is 
only one of them left,' and I saw where he pointed 
his finger— a lone buzzard floating high overhead. 
He certainly looked like a very lonesome creature 
up there." 

It took General Wood only a few weeks to de- 
stroy the buzzards' business, but it took two years 
of continuous bad business to drive them off. 

Late in 1899, General Wood made a brief visit 
to the United States, receiving magnificent ova- 
tions wherever he went. In recognition of his 
services in Santiago, Harvard University, his 
Alma Mater, bestowed on him an LL.D. degree. 

"Leonard Wood, Harvard Doctor of Medicine, 
army surgeon, single-minded soldier, lifesaver, 
restorer of a province," was President Charles W. 
Eliot's eloquent and brief eulogy as he conferred 
the academic honour on General Wood. 

W^ood's reward from his government was a 
promotion to the rank of Major-General of Volun- 
teers. 



VI 

Governor and Business Manager of Cuba 

GUIZOT in his history of France tells an in- 
teresting incident in the course of the visit of Peter 
the Great to Paris. The young monarch, who was 
at that time opening Russia's "windows" toward 
Europe, demanded shortly after his arrival in 
Paris to be shown the statue of Richelieu. 

"One of his first visits," Guizot writes, "was 
to the church of the Sorbonne; when he caught 
sight of Richelieu's monument, he ran up to it, 
embraced the statue, and 'Ah, great man,' said 
he, 'if thou wert still alive, I would give thee one 
half of my kingdom to teach me to govern the 
other.'" 

It was a safe offer. The cardinal statesman 
was dead. No such liberal offers are made to 
living statesmen whose abilities and accomplish- 
ments are measured on the uncertain and varying 
scales of contemporary judgment. The head of a 
great business corporation may offer a princely 
reward for the services of a little commercial Riche- 

81 



82 The Life of Leonard Wood 

lieu, but rulers and nations like to govern or 
misgovern themselves. 

No matter how miserable its state, no nation 
would appeal to a foreign government expert to 
come in and govern it and teach it how to live. 

However, just such an opportunity came to 
Leonard Wood when, on December 12, 1899, he 
was appointed Governor-General of Cuba. He 
had made good as Military Governor of Santiago 
city and the province of the same name. His 
reward was the governorship of the whole island. 

Of course Cuba did not invite him to come and 
rule and teach it how to rule itself. If the people 
of Cuba had been allowed to have their own way 
after the Spaniards had been driven out, they 
would no doubt have escorted the Americans 
politely to their ships, thanked them for their 
services, and then the various factions of the 
island would have continued the war among them- 
selves. 

In spite of the conflict which raged in Washing- 
ton at the close of the Spanish-American War, it 
was clear to all political parties that we owed a 
duty to Cuba beyond that of freeing the island from 
Spanish rule. Cuba had to be put on her feet and 
given a fair start as an independent nation. Gen- 
eral Wood received his appointment as Governor- 
General from Elihu Root, who had succeeded 



Governor of Cuba 83 

Alger as Secretary of War. If, on confirming the 
appointment. President McKinley had been re- 
minded of Peter's remark before the statue of 
RicheHeu, he would probably have said that he 
expected Leonard Wood to do a great deal better 
job than RicheHeu ever could have done — and that 
for the modest salary of an American army of- 
ficer. 

A few weeks before. Wood had been advanced 
to the rank of Major-General of Volunteers pay- 
ing at that time a salary of $7,500 a year for the 
first five years. This was the maximum pay he 
drew from his government while acting as its chief 
agent in resuscitating Cuba. However, the em- 
bryo Cuban government showed its appreciation 
of his service by paying him a like sum, making 
his yearly income $15,000. That is the highest 
salary he has ever received in his life. Like all 
army oflBcers without private fortunes. Wood is 
to-day a poor man. 

During his Cuban administration. Wood's ad- 
ministrative genius being recognized, he was 
offered a business position by an American firm 
at a salary of $40,000 a year. The hours were 
short, the work easy and pleasant, his future 
material prosperity and that of his family as- 
sured, but he declined it. One of his earliest 
ambitions had been to be of service to his country. 



84 The Life of Leonard Wood 

He has never lost that incentive. On his Cuban 
job, Wood laboured from twelve to twenty-four 
hours a day and the labour was hard. 

When he appointed Wood Governor of Cuba, 
Root knew him only through his oflficial record. 
The two had met only once. This was at a dinner 
in Washington when Wood was Military Governor 
of Santiago. At the time the Senate Military 
Affairs Committee was sifting the charges against 
Wood in 1903, Root testified, "He (Wood) was 
made Governor-General of Cuba on my recom- 
mendation. President McKinley did not suggest 
it." 

President McKinley's instructions to the new 
Governor-General were brief but comprehensive. 
He merely told General Wood "to prepare Cuba as 
rapidly as possible for the establishment of an 
independent government, republican in form, and 
a good school system." It was a big order, an 
assignment which any statesman of the time might 
have been proud to take. No time limit could 
be set, but as the whole world at that time was 
watching with jealous eyes the growing power and 
prestige of the United States ; as the statesmen and 
diplomats of Europe, knowing what a rich prize 
Cuba was, distrusted our professions, firmly be- 
lieving that we would annex the island, the ad- 
ministration was keenly desirous of proving as 



Governor of Cuba 85 

early as possible its good faith and unselfishness. 
Hence General Wood's time for performing his 
great task was limited. He was his own pace- 
maker, but he was required to set himself a brisk 
Yankee pace. 

Whenever an American commonwealth finds 
its financial condition unfavourably disturbed 
through extravagance of public officials, ill-ad- 
vised legislation, or through necessarily heavy 
expenditure of funds for public improvements, 
the cry goes out for a business governor. Many 
a time in our history have the various states of the 
Union called for experienced business men to cor- 
rect the errors of bungling politicians and to pull 
through executive measures which were primarily 
business ventures on a large scale. 

When one looks back upon Cuba at the end of 
the last century with her ruined finances, her 
imperative need for big public improvements, 
her equally imperative need for the up-building 
of her agricultural, industrial, and commercial life, 
one cannot escape the conclusion that what Cuba 
required was a business administration. 

Cuba in 1899 was first of all a business job. 

And Leonard Wood, the Governor of the island, 
had no business experience. 

How he measured up as business administrator 
may be gathered from the following translation 



86 Tlie Life of Leonard Wood 

of an article written by a Cuban which recently 
appeared in a Cuban publication: 

Only those residing in Cuba since the Spanish regime 
can appreciate to its full extent the marvellous progress 
of the island in the score of years elapsed, due to a great 
extent to the wisdom of General Wood's administra- 
tion. When he took possession of the government, the 
Public Treasury was in a very lamentable condition, 
as was also all public service. In the first fiscal year 
(of the American occupation) only $16,151,908.12 was 
collected in customs revenues. The improvements 
introduced in the postal service brought $235,854.26 
into the treasury. The secretary of the new govern- 
ment collected in the same fiscal year $899,256.54 and 
by various other means $977,774.65 was taken in, mak- 
ing the total $18,264,793.57. The island was thus be- 
coming normal and the task of the administration some- 
what easier. Great sums were invested in public works 
and sanitation in the cities. The people began to feel 
satisfaction, using their energies in consolidating peace 
and reestablishing normal conditions in the various 
departments of the national government. 

In the fiscal year 1900-01 the collections for the Pub- 
lic Treasury amounted to $18,463,941.47, and from the 
end of that fiscal year to May 20, 1902, when General 
Wood and the Government of Intervention withdrew, 
the collections amounted to $17,071,477.98, that is to 
say, a total of $58,795,223.40 was collected during 
Wood's administration. His administration spent a 
total of $58,160,053.11. When he left Cuba, Wood 
handed $635,170.29 to the Cuban authorities. 

When General Leonard Wood took charge of the 



Governor of Cuba 87 

government, there were only 193 postoffices in condition 
of rendering service. When he left, there were 366 
postoflBces giving good service. 

The telegraph service was very poor and limited. 
With the help of the army. Wood repaired the existing 
lines and established new ones leaving the island with 
77 stations and 3,518 miles of lines. 

It is not possible to enumerate the great many im- 
provements done for the island during his short ad- 
ministration, and it is very difficult to appreciate to-day 
the hard work done under difficult conditions by Gen- 
eral Wood and his men for the benefit of the Cuban peo- 
ple in general. One word should be said here in praise 
of the Cuban people, and it is that they unanimously 
gave the best cooperation and help to the Military Gov- 
ernor, realizing the altruistic and patriotic work he 
was doing for the island. Their efforts and patriotic 
conduct will bring to them, as it will to the name of 
General Leonard Wood and his intelligent assistants, 
the admiration and respect of future generations. The 
Cubans will forever remember Wood's labours with 
love and praise. 

Just as the history of Santiago under his mili- 
tary governorship was the story of Leonard Wood 
during that period, so it maybe said that the history 
of Cuba from December 12, 1899, when he was ap- 
pointed Governor-General of the island, till May 20, 
1902, when the Cuban government was turned over 
to the Cuban people, is the story of Wood. Cuba 
was his work, his whole life throughout this time. 



88 The Life of Leonard Wood 

What he accompHshed in creating order out of 
disorder, building up the commerce of the country, 
rewriting its laws, establishing its public educa- 
tional system, fighting its epidemics, founding 
the courts, remodeling the institutions of cor- 
rections and charities, developing public works 
and settling innumerable public questions which 
involved exercise of statesmanship, even diplo- 
macy, constitutes Wood's biography during this 
time. 

Wood was less than forty when he became Gov- 
ernor-General of Cuba. He was one of the rulers 
of the world with a bigger job on his hands than 
most rulers ever encounter. The chief executives 
of nations are usually kept busy enough wrestling 
with current problems, even though they inherit 
from their predecessors a well-ordered government. 
But in addition to taking care of the new issues 
which naturally arise in any country, Wood had to 
tear down much of the old house that Spain had 
erected, and build up a new structure. Cuba's 
government from the constitution down had to be 
created. As he worked to reconstruct. Wood had 
to forge the tools with which he laboured. 

It is futile to say that the problem before Wood 
was but the problem of Santiago on a larger scale. 
He was, of course, much better fitted to assume 
control of the whole island because of his executive 



Governor of Cuba 89 

experience in Santiago, but the whole Cuban prob- 
lem, because it was on so much larger scale, de- 
manded different methods. 

For instance, in case of an epidemic, Wood could 
stock Santiago city, a town of 50,000 people, 
with provisions, then put it under lock and key, 
utterly isolating it temporarily from the outside 
world. He could suspend practically all business 
and impose the most drastic sanitary regulations. 
That is virtually what he did when the yellow- 
fever epidemic broke forth in the city in the sum- 
mer of 1899. 

But nothing of that sort could be attempted in 
Havana, the capital of the island, with a popula- 
tion of more than 250,000. Measures wholly 
different from those used in Santiago province had 
to be applied to correct the many evils — inherit- 
ances of Spanish rule. In addition Wood now had 
to undertake an immense amount of constructive 
labour for the whole country. We can only out- 
line the notably important events of his adminis- 
tration. 

He consulted Chief Justice White of the United 
States Supreme Court, who pronounced the Cuban 
laws sound but the judicial procedure faulty, re- 
quiring many changes and modifications. This 
pronouncement from such a distinguished author- 
ity became Wood's guide. He removed judicial 



90 Tlie Life of Leonard Wood 

and prosecuting officers who were found to be 
blameworthy for the miscarriage of justice, and 
appointed a commission to inquire into the chief 
faults in legal procedure. The iniquitous fee 
system for judges and prosecuting officers was 
abolished, and these court officials were placed on 
fixed and sufficient salaries determined by the com- 
mission. For the first time in Cuban history 
salaries to public officials were paid regularly. The 
incentive to graft was removed so far as it could be 
removed. 

Wood found the court as well as other public 
records of the island in a confused state. He 
applied a characteristically American method to 
make them clear and orderly. He established in 
Havana a free commercial school and furnished 
trained stenographers, typists, and clericals to the 
courts and other governmental departments. 
Within a few months young Cuban men and 
women were being distributed from this school to 
the courts and government offices of the island to 
exercise their skill in making Spanish "pothooks," 
transcribe their notes on typewriters, and file and 
index records in true American fashion. It was 
a simple, common-sense solution of a vexatious 
problem. 

General Wood named a prison commission which 
went over all the prisons in Cuba and released 



Governor of Cuba 91 

scores of prisoners against whom no evidence 
of wrong doing could be found. The whole prison 
system was overhauled and remodeled on the pat- 
tern of the most modern penal institutions in this 
country. Under the Spanish regime, youths and 
first offenders had been thrown into cells with old 
criminals. They came out infected with crime 
and vice. He organized a new department of 
Charities and Corrections under a capable Amer- 
ican superintendent, Major E. St. John Greble. 
A reform school for girls was built at Aldecoa and 
another for boys at Guana jay where young of- 
fenders were taught useful trades while paying 
their social debts to their country. 

One of the great faults of the Spanish adminis- 
tration of Cuba was its fearful extravagance. It 
was extravagant not only in that it seemed planned 
with the express view of providing lucrative posi- 
tions for Spanish bureaucrats, but in that the 
system itself was wasteful. For instance, there 
were many local units of government, towns and 
villages, and rural communities, each of which had 
only a few inhabitants and none of which was able 
to pay the expenses of a local government. Wood 
abolished these small governmental units and 
merged them with larger communities thus effect- 
ing an important economic reform. 

Shortly after taking office Wood appointed a 



92 The Life of Leonard Wood 

commission to draft a general election law modelled 
after our own. The Australian ballot system was 
adopted. Circulars describing the election system, 
ballot and ballot boxes were sent out to every 
election district in Cuba, and within six months 
after he became Governor-General Wood gave the 
country its first lesson in self-government at the 
voting booths. For the first time in the history 
of Cuba the people chose their own local repre- 
sentatives and municipal officials. 

One of Wood's hardest battles in Cuba was 
directed against the railroad companies. Busi- 
ness, big and small, had been pretty thoroughly 
demoralized during the intermittent revolutions. 
Nothing much remained of the railroad except an 
impudent presumption on the part of the railroad 
officials that they could fix their own rates at any 
figure they pleased without any regard whatso- 
ever for the public. They would charge as high 
as eighty cents for carrying a sugar bag weighing 
three hundred and twenty pounds from plantation 
to seacoast, while the haul from the coast to the 
refineries of New York City, a distance twelve 
times as long, cost but from eighteen to twenty 
cents. Wood enlisted the services of Mr. E. R. 
Olcott, an attorney of New York City, who was 
familiar with the railroad laws of the Spanish- 
American countries, to rewrite the Cuban railroad 



Governor of Cuba 93 

laws in conjunction with General Grenville M. 
Dodge and Sir William Van Horn. An equitable 
rate system was enforced, and under the supervi- 
sion of General Dodge and Sir William the railroads 
were extended and put in excellent repair. 

Under the Spanish regime the railroads had been 
overtaxed, which in part accounted for the ex- 
orbitant rates. They had been forced to pay 
ten per cent, on their gross passenger service 
revenue, three per cent, on freight revenue, and 
four and one half per cent, on their dividends. 
Wood abolished the gross income taxes and raised 
to six per cent, the net income tax. 

Wood's business ability as an administrator was 
put to a sudden and unexpected test by the Bacon 
resolution in Congress in 1900. Up to that time 
the United States had spent $42,000,000 of its 
money in Cuba of which $26,000,000 had been 
expended under Wood. The resolution called for 
a full and immediate accounting of General Wood's 
stewardship. 

The first ship to leave Cuba for the United 
States, after Wood received his order, carried a 
complete statement of expenditures accounting 
for every dollar and accompanied by vouchers 
and the original order for all the money spent. 

When the Americans entered Cuba in 1898, 
there were no public schools or public school 



94 The Life of Leonard Wood 

buildings on the island. All the educational in- 
stitutions were private and for the benefit of the 
favoured few of the upper and wealthier classes. 
The Spanish government had never distinguished 
itseK either at home or in its colonies by encourag- 
ing public instruction. During the latter half of 
the eighteenth century Cuban youths had begun 
to flock to British colonies of this country to 
attend colleges. They returned with progressive 
ideas which did not suit the Spanish masters of the 
island, and in 1799 a royal edict was issued warn- 
ing Cuban parents against sending their sons to 
the colleges of this country which had just won its 
independence. 

In his instructions to General Wood, President 
McKjnley had ordered him to establish a good 
school system. When he received the order, 
General Wood had already founded a pubhc school 
system in Cuba. Wliile he was Military Governor 
of Santiago city and province from July 20, 1898, to 
December 12, 1899, he had established nearly two 
hundred schools within the territory under his 
jurisdiction. 

Wood now began to create a national system 
of education. He found two young men among 
his officers well trained for undertaking this labour. 
They were Lieut. Alexis Everett Frye, a Harvard 
man who, before volutiteering as a soldier in the 



Governor of Cuba 95 

Spanish-American War, had achieved distinction as 
an educator, and Lieut. Matthew E. Hanna, a 
West Pointer, who had been a school teacher be- 
fore entering the Mihtary Academy. 

Under Wood's instructions Lieutenants Frye 
and Hanna drafted a school law modelled largely 
after the Massachusetts and Ohio systems. The 
school system was made independent of politics 
and provided for the election of officials by the 
people. Due credit in the building of the Cuban 
schools must be given to Dr. Enrique Jose Varona, 
Secretary of Public Instruction, a Cuban. 

In every town or community of five hundred 
people two schools were built, one for each sex. 
Most of the instructors had little or no teaching 
experience, but they entered on their duties with 
a splendid enthusiasm for service, and thousands 
of little children, black and white, whose parents 
had never dared hope that their offspring would 
receive the benefits of education, flocked to the 
schoolrooms. With the advent of the schools there 
was a new hope born for the young manhood and 
womanhood of the island. The school districts 
were divided into three classes: municipal dis- 
tricts of the first class for cities of 30,000 or 
more inhabitants; municipal districts of the sec- 
ond class for cities of 10,000 inhabitants and 
less than 30,000; and municipal districts of the 



96 The Life of Leonard Wood 

third class for communities of less than 10,000. 
These districts were sub-divided into school units 
having at least sixty resident pupils. Wood and 
his able assistants took infinite care in choosing 
textbooks and other school equipment. The 
schoolrooms were up-to-date in every way. Com- 
plete records were kept of attendance and of 
progress made by the young pupils. Examining 
boards were appointed. Summer normal schools 
were established so that the inexperienced teachers 
could profit by instruction in pedagogy. 

Within a year after Wood entered oflBce as Gov- 
enor-General more than 3,000 public schools had 
been opened. In 1902 Cuba could boast of pubhc 
school enrollment of 256,000 pupils, surely not a 
bad beginning in a country having a population 
of only a little more than a million and a half. 
The cost was $4,000,000. Under Spanish rule the 
island had been bled for $7,000,000 per year for 
the maintenance of the Spanish troops and navy 
in and around Cuba for the express purpose of 
keeping the natives enslaved. Out of the 
$34,000,000 collected annually in Cuba, $182,000 
had been spent for educational purposes by the 
Spanish authorities. 

When General Wood was organizing the school 
system, a friend advised him to import American 
teachers. 



Governor of Cuba 97 

"I'll do nothing of the sort," he replied. "If 
we did, the Cubans would misunderstand us and 
think we were seeking to 'Americanize' the chil- 
dren." 

So native teachers of the best families of Cuba 
were found to instruct the youth. It was Wood's 
policy to appoint Cubans wherever possible to 
official positions. During the reconstruction many 
of the high executive posts were occupied by Amer- 
icans who held military rank. The Americans 
were displaced as soon as Cubans fitted for these 
high offices could be found. It was an important 
part of Wood's job to train native public servants 
so that Cuba might as soon as possible stand on 
her own feet. To do this he had to conduct in 
fact a school of democratic government for Cuban 
people, and to materialize therein all the cardinal 
principles of American democracy. 

While building up the free school system. Wood 
encouraged the private schools. Technical schools 
for boys and girls were established in various cities 
and soon commanded large attendance. 

Wood found the University of Havana, the only 
institution in Cuba conferring degrees, in a cur- 
ious state of demoralization. The faculty of the 
University consisted of ninety-six professors, all 
well paid; but there were only four hundred and 
six students. Most of the professors had very 



98 Tlie Life of Leonard Wood 

little to do, many of them did nothing at all, 
having no classes, no pupils. The laboratory 
equipment was utterly worthless, the buildings 
were dilapidated, and all the furnishings run down. 
Wood ordered a complete reorganization of the 
University. He compelled all candidates for the 
faculty to submit to competitive examinations. 
He sent purchasing agents to Europe and the 
United States to buy the most modern equipment, 
scientific instruments and other necessary appara- 
tus. The University was poorly located. Wood 
scrapped the old buildings and installed the 
University in a far superior structure, built by the 
Spaniards as an arsenal and munition factory and 
situated on a hill overlooking the city. The 
University still remains on this site, one of the 
most picturesque in Havana, commanding, as it^ 
does, a view of the whole city. . 

While he objected to importing American 
teachers on the ground that the Cubans would 
justly fear an attempt was being made to "Amer- 
icanize" the island, Wood endeavoured in every 
way to give the Cuban teachers the best benefits 
of our experience in education. In the spring of, 
1900, Harvard University invited the teachers 
of the island to spend their vacation at its summer 
school to learn something of American pedagogy. 
Wood enthusiastically^ championed this venture. 



Governor of Cuba 99 

He sent 1,280 teachers to Cambridge, Massa- 
chusetts, all expenses being paid by the Mihtary 
Government. 

He was under no delusion as to the actual 
amount of studying they could accompHsh on this 
junket. But what he was anxious for was to have 
the teachers see something of America and of our 
best educational institutions, to put them in touch 
with our leading educators, and to create the 
friendliest feeling between these guides of Cuba's 
future citizens and the people of this country. The 
trip was an entire success and the teachers re- 
turned to their schools with fresh inspiration 
gathered in the course of the delightful journey 
and their brief period of association with some of 
the most cultured men and women of our country. 

One of the sad problems of the Mihtary Gov- 
ernment and one of the most difficult to solve 
was that of the Cuban war orphans. During the 
rebellion, which led up to our interference, thou- 
sands of families had become disrupted, and 
thousands of Uttle waifs, who had lost trace of 
their parents, were begging in the cities. The 
problem was most similar to that which various 
American organizations are now seeking to solve 
in Serbia, Roumania, Poland, and other countries 
which were over-run by hostile armies in the late 
war. Wood estabUshed five commodious asylums 



100 The Life of Leonard Wood 

for the parentless children. Here they were given 
the best of instructions and the best of care that 
the country could afford. At that time the ques- 
tion of organized charity had not received the 
careful study it now has. Twenty years ago we 
had not heard much of the dangers of institution- 
alizing and pauperizing individuals dependent on 
public aid. However, Wood immediately foresaw 
the possible dangers to which the war orphans 
might be subjected in these asylums. He there- 
fore gave strict instructions to his subordinates to 
find suitable, permanent homes for them as soon 
as possible. This policy was followed in the case 
of young war victims, so far as it was possible. 

The great number of war orphans and the 
abnormal percentage of common -law unions gave 
a sinister indication of the decline of Cuba's social 
state, due entirely to the demoralization of the 
revolutionary wars. The family unit, the very 
foundation of every civilized state, was in the 
process of disintegration. One who delves into 
the voluminous official reports of the American 
occupation of Cuba, and reads therein the dry 
accounts of the conditions which existed at the 
close of the Spanish-American War, is forced 
to the conclusion that Cuba needed a Moses, a 
prophet, whom the people would follow blindly, 
trust with religious devotion, and for whom they 



Governor of Cuba 101 

would sacrifice all their selfish interests and pre- 
judices. That a doctor and soldier of an alien 
race, speaking but haltingly their language, could 
so completely immerse himself in their national 
life, so intelligently understand their requirements, 
and so wisely solve their complex problems seems 
almost miraculous. 

And Leonard Wood had come to Cuba to fight! 

He did fight, but he remained to rule. And for 
the brilliant success of his administration there is 
but one explanation — his sound common sense. 
After all, genius is but common sense developed 
to the nth degree. 

Wood knew little or nothing of the so-called arts 
of statesmanship and diplomacy, and yet he was 
constantly called upon for the exercise of both in 
adjusting public questions, which demanded great 
tact and a sagacious appraisal of social and relig- 
ious conditions on the island. In settling the 
questions of the marriage laws and the claims of 
the Holy See against the United States as suc- 
cessor to the Spanish Government in Cuba he had 
to play the role of a statesman and a diplomat. 

There had recently been instituted laws which 
recognized as legal only those marriages which 
were performed by judges. Marriages by the 
clergy were invalid. One can imagine how such 
a condition of affairs would shock a deeply re- 



102 The Life of Leonard Wood 

ligious Catholic community. Thousands of couples 
had ignored the law. They had been married 
by the priests of their faith without any civil 
ceremony. Naturally these good people were 
outraged by the fact that in the eyes of the law 
their unions were merely those of common law, and 
the legitimacy of their offspring was a disputed and 
unsettled matter. Others had dispensed with all 
or any ceremony. 

Wood immediately recognized the grave injus- 
tice and the potential danger of this condition. 
Although a Protestant in religion, he consulted 
with the Catliolic clergy in drafting a new mar- 
riage code which would remove the causes of com- 
plaint. The new law gave the same rights to the 
duly-ordained clergymen of all denominations as 
to civil marriage officials. The clergy were in- 
vested with the right to act as agents of the state 
in filHng out the forms required by the new mar- 
riage statute. The children born of common-law 
marriages were legitimatized. 

In the years from 1837 to 1841 Spain had 
secularized all church property in her colonial 
possession. Complicated disputes had arisen be- 
tween the state and the Holy See, finally resulting 
in an agreement entered into in 1861, whereby 
Spain promised to return to the church all property 
not disposed of, and to pay for forty years an 



Governor of Cuba 103 

annual rental of more than $500,000 on all other 
church properties held by the state for various 
purposes. As a legal successor to Spain in Cuba, 
the Military Government was presented with a 
handsome bill by the church authorities. Wood 
instituted an extensive and thorough inquiry into 
the church claims. Instead of approaching this 
matter as though it were strictly a legal case in 
which the Cathohc church was the complainant 
and the Military Government the defendant, Wood 
assumed that both sides involved desired only a 
fair settlement. Investigation showed that the 
claims of the church were eminently fair, and a full 
settlement was made to the satisfaction of all 
parties concerned. 

It is practically certain that the legal advisers 
of the Military Government could have picked 
plenty of flaws in the church claims, and that, had 
he so desired. Wood could have evaded full settle- 
ment. He went through the unwieldy mass of 
documents covering the case, but instead of look- 
ing for handy pegs on which to hang a legal de- 
fence, Wood, guided by sound common sense, 
recognized the fundamental principles of justice 
involved and inside of a few days he had settled 
forever a dispute half a century old. Without 
amicable relationship with the church Wood's 
reconstruction work in Cuba would have been 



104 The Life of Leonard Wood 

rendered most difficult. His enemies might have 
charged that he was shrewdly currying favour 
with the powerful clerical interest. But we shall 
see, before we reach the end of his Cuban ad- 
ministration, that Wood was unafraid to antago- 
nize even more powerful individuals than Bishop 
Donatus of Havana, when to do otherwise would 
have meant breach of trust and confidence. 

During his Santiago administration Bishop 
Bernaba was elevated from the priesthood. An 
ardent Cuban patriot, he showed great affectioni 
for the liberators of his country and extended an 
invitation to Wood to walk with him in the cere- 
monial procession from his little parish church 
where he had served to the Cathedral. The pro- 
cession was an intensely dramatic and solemn 
spectacle dominated as it was by the tragedies 
of the past and the joy of liberation from the Span- 
ish yoke. Thousands of Cubans lined the streets 
and crowded forward to receive their first blessing 
from a Cuban bishop. When the people saw the 
American Military Governor walking by the side 
of the new Bishop and under his canopy they cried : 
*' Thank God the General is a Catholic." The 
Bishop was an old man and he was so overcome 
by his emotions that General Wood had to steady 
him with his strong arm. Sometimes, as the 
Bishop leaned forward to bless the people, who one 



Governor of Cuba 105 

after another grasped his hand to kiss it, his mitre 
would sUp to one side, but there was a cool and 
dignified young American General by his side who 
would straighten the mitre without any em- 
barrassment, and this simple service was received 
in the spirit in which it was rendered. " Thank God 
you're here," the Bishop said. "I'm so old that I 
could not have made this long journey if you had 
not been here to help me." When Wood told him 
that he was not a Catholic, Bishop Bernaba 
said, "You're a good Catholic, only you do not 
know it." 

When, in 1899, Wood left Santiago for a visit 
to the United States the people of the city pre- 
sented him with an illuminated scroll in Spanish, 
reading in part: 

"The greatest of your successes is to have won 
the confidence and esteem of a people in trouble." 

After straightening out the Cuban marriage 
law Wood received the following letter from the 
Bishop of Havana dated August 10, 1900: 

I saw published in the ofiicial Gazette yesterday the 
decree whereby you give civil effect and validity to 
religious marriages. This act of your Excellency 
corresponds perfectly with the elevated ideals of justice, 
fairness, and true liberty to which aspired the institu- 
tions and government of the United States, which you so 
worthily represent in this Island. 



106 The Life of Leonard Wood 

I gladly take this opportunity of declaring that in all 
my dealings with your Excellency I have found you 
ever disposed to listen to all reasonable petitions and to 
guard the sacred rights of justice which is the firmest 
fomidation of every honoured and noble nation. 

I am moved, therefore, to speak the thanks not only 
of the Catholics but likewise of all others who truly 
love the moral, religious, and political well-being of the 
people, and to express to your Excellency the sincere 
feelings and satisfaction and gratitude for this decree, 
which is worthy of a wise leader and an able statesman. 
This, too, gives me confidence that all your decrees and 
orders will continue to be dictated by the same high- 
minded and liberal spirit of justice that while it respects 
the religious sentiment, also guarantees and defends 
the rights and liberties of all honest institutions. 
Very respectfully yours, 

X. DoNATUs, Bishop of Havana. 

On leaving Havana in November, 1901, to be- 
come Bishop of Ephesus, Bishop Donatus wrote 
Wood as follows: 

Called by the confidence of the Holy Father to a 
larger and more difficult field of action, I feel the duty 
before leaving Cuba to express to your Excellency my 
sentiment of friendship and gratitude, not only for the 
kindness shown to me, but for the fair treatment of the 
questions with the Government of the Island, especially 
the Marriage and Church Property questions. The 
equity and justice which inspired your decision will 
devolve before all fair-minded people to the honour, not 



Governor of Cuba 107 

only of you personally, but also to the Government you 
so worthily represent. I am gratified to tell you that 
I have already expressed the same sentiment to the 
Holy Father in writing and I will tell him orally on my 
visit to Rome, 

Yours very respectfully, 
X. DoNATUS, Bishop of Havana. 

When he was about to leave for the Philippines 
after finishing his work in Cuba, General Wood 
was the recipient of a most remarkable expression 
of confidence from the Catholic church of this 
country. A delegation of church authorities 
headed by the Reverend William Ambrose Jones, 
later Bishop of Porto Rico, called on Wood to re- 
quest him to represent the Catholic church in the 
Philippines. If this were agreeable to him, che 
delegates said, they would approach the President 
to suggest that he be invested with the proper 
authority, whereupon the churcli would give him 
full power to represent it in all cases dealing with 
the Philippine colonial government. 

No review of Leonard Wood's career would be 
complete without an account of the successful 
campaign fought during his Cuban administration 
against the plagues of the island, especially yellow 
fever. 

General Wood did not personally slay this mon- 
ster, which annually took a toll of thousands of 



108 The Life of Leonard Wood 

lives and millions of dollars, but with his knowledge 
of medical science and his physician's appreciation 
of the importance of conquering the plague, he 
left nothing undone to smooth the way for the 
scientists working under his jurisdiction in stamp- 
ing it out. 

There is glory enough for all who shared in the 
labours of Major Walter Reed, the American 
conqueror of yellow fever. The hard and difficult 
campaign which he waged would certainly have 
been rendered more hard and difficult and costly 
in life had he not received the intelligent and 
devoted cooperation of the central Cuban Mili- 
tary Government. 

It has never been disputed that it was the con- 
quest of yellow fever which made possible the 
construction of the Panama Canal at the time 
it was built. The United States could never have 
accomplished this monumental feat of engineering 
with yellow fever infesting the American tropics. 
The cost in lives would have been prohibitive. 

General Wood was one of the first converts of 
the medical fraternity to the theory that yellow 
fever was a germ, not a filth disease. He had 
employed in Santiago city the most modern 
methods of sanitation and he had strictly enforced 
his health decrees. But in their effect on yellow 
fever all these precautions were practically worth- 



Governor of Cuba 109 

less. Better sanitation was effected, but even 
perfect sanitation failed to check the progress of 
yellow fever. 

In 1899, when Wood had made Santiago the 
cleanest city in tropical America, if not in the 
Western Hemisphere, a virulent yellow-fever 
epidemic broke out in the city. The Military 
Government met the crisis by quarantining the 
port. Non-immunes were removed, infected houses 
were closed, and Wood's sanitation squads scoured 
the community with disinfectants. Even the 
streets were sprinkled with solutions of corrosive 
sublimate. Two American physicians, Drs. Car- 
roll and Lazaer, heroically presented themselves for 
inoculation. Dr. Lazaer died while Dr. Carroll 
recovered. 

In an article on the Military Government in 
Cuba, published in the Annals of the American 
Academy of Political and Social Science in 1903, 
General Wood tells the story of Dr. Reed's dis- 
covery. He states that Drs. Reed, Carroll, and 
Kean called at the headquarters of the Military 
Government in Havana one day and informed him 
that they had reached a point in their scientific 
research where it was necessary to make extensive 
experiments on human beings. They asked the 
Governor-General for money to pay those who 
submitted themselves for inoculation and for au- 



110 The Life of Leonard Wood 

thority to go ahead with their dangerous investi- 
gation. 

General Wood told the physicians that they had 
the backing of the Cuban Mihtary Government, 
financial and otherwise. He cautioned them to 
experiment only on sound persons who understood 
distinctly the risk assumed. The written consent 
of the subject must be secured before inoculation. 
He further stipulated that the subject must be 
of legal age. General Wood, in a report of the 
achievement, wrote: 

The stegomyia mosquito was found to be, beyond 
question, the means of transmitting the yellow fever 
germ. This mosquito, in order to become infected, 
must bite a person sick with yellow fever during the first 
five days of the disease. It then requires apparently 
ten days for the germ so to develop that the mosquito 
can transmit the disease, and all non-immunes who are 
bitten by a mosquito of the class mentioned, infected as 
described, invariably develop a pronounced case of 
yellow fever in from three and a half to five days from 
the time they are bitten. It was further demonstrated 
that infection from cases so produced could again be 
transmitted by the above-described type of mosquito 
to another person who could in turn become infected 
with the fever. It was also proven that yellow fever 
could be transmitted by means of introduction into 
the circulation of blood serum even after filtering 
through porcelain filters, which later experiment in- 
dicates that the organism is exceedingly small, in fact. 



Governor of Cuba 111 

that it is probably beyond the power of any microscope 
at present in use. It was positively demonstrated that 
yellow fever could not be transmitted by clothing, let- 
ters, etc., and that consequently all the old methods of 
fumigation and disinfection were only useful in so far as 
they served to destroy mosquitoes, their young and 
their eggs. 

With the estabHshment of these facts was inaugu- 
rated an entirely new method of dealing with yellow 
fever, a method very similar to that adopted in the 
treatment of malarial fever cases, only carried out 
much more thoroughly. 

A yellow fever case, as soon as discovered, was care- 
fully isolated in premises inclosed with fine wire screens, 
and further precautions taken to prevent the mosquito 
from coming to them. The houses in which cases had 
occurred were sealed up and filled with formaldehyde 
or other gases, for the purpose of killing all mosquitoes. 
The same was done with neighbouring houses. The 
effect of this method of dealing with the disease was at 
once apparent. The fever was checked and brought 
to an end at a time of the year when it is usually on 
the increase. This was accomplished in spite of the 
fact that a large number of non-immunes arrived in 
Havana and other ports of the island. The disagree- 
able and costly process of disinfection formerly in use 
had been practically done away with. The means at 
present employed is much less destructive to property 
and much less annoying to the people. 

Cuba is now free from yellow fever, and has been so 
for a considerable period. There has not been a case 
originating in the east end of the island for three years, 
and none in Havana for more than a year. No epidemic 



112 The Life of Leonard Wood 

of yellow fever has appeared in the Southern states in all 
that time. 



Thus the long and tragic history of this danger- 
ous disease which had held back the development 
of the tropics was brought to a close. In 1901 
twenty-nine persons per thousand were admitted 
to hospitals in Cuba as yellow-fever patients. In 
1902 there was one case of yellow fever in the 
island. 

American physicians had achieved one of the 
greatest scientific triumphs of modern times, mak- 
ing tropical America safe for the whole white race. 
That is civilization. 

The deliverance of the American tropics from 
the subjugation of the horrible yellow-fever night- 
mare came with a dramatic suddenness which 
startled the whole world of medical science. It 
was the outstanding master-stroke of the American 
occupation of Cuba as it conferred on humanity 
a world-wide blessing. Leonard Wood's labour 
of making Cuba a safer place through the ap- 
plication of the principles of modern sanitation 
and health measures in general was of slower 
development. He began fighting his battle for 
sanitation in the island when he became Military 
Governor of Santiago and kept up the fight until 
he left Cuba. He found the island suffering from 



Governor of Cuba 113 

tuberculosis, typhoid, glanders, small-pox, and 
leprosy. He wiped out the filth diseases, launched 
an educational campaign throughout the country 
to check typhoid and tuberculosis. He ordered 
the population vaccinated to prevent small-pox, 
and isolated the lepers. 

The progress of his sanitation labours may be 
judged by the fact that in 1898 there was prob- 
ably not one single American soldier in Cuba 
who was not at some time disabled by disease, the 
mortahty rate from disease among our troops 
being very high, while during the ten and two 
thirds months ending May 30, 1902, the death rate 
among American troops in Cuba was 1.67 per 
thousand from disease; in the United States, 4.83, 
and in the Pacific islands, 20.26. In other words, 
the chances of a soldier dying in the United States 
were almost three times greater than in Cuba which 
four years before had been unfit for a foreign-born 
person. 

There were no trained nurses in the island when 
the Americans came. General Wood established 
training schools for nurses, and the graduates of 
these institutions became his most valuable health 
and sanitation missionaries in Cuba. Nor was 
all the work which he had begun for the health of 
the community to be allowed to lapse when the 
Americans withdrew. 



114 The Life of Leonard Wood 

When the Cuban Constitutional Convention 
which sat in Havana from November 5, 1900, to 
February 21, 1901, had finished its work, and the 
new Constitution, modelled largely on our own, had 
been ratified by the representatives of the Cuban 
people, the United States Government insisted on 
inserting in this document several paragraphs for 
the protection of the new republic. Tliese clauses, 
known as the Piatt Amendment, were made a part 
of the Cuban Constitution on June 12, 1901. One 
of these clauses pledges the Cuban government to 
continue the public sanitation measures begun by 
General Wood and his assistants in the island. The 
American Government, in other words, thought 
so well of Wood's work for a healthier Cuba that 
it insisted on perpetuating it in the Constitution 
on which rests the Cuban Republic. 

Wood built school houses in practically every 
community throughout Cuba, and modern hos- 
pitals in all the larger towns. Harbours were 
dredged and otherwise improved for shipping, and 
Hghthouses were constructed; Wood's railway 
experts built a good share of the present railway 
system of Cuba, and it was due to his championing 
of good roads that highways were constructed 
throughout the rich agricultural districts connect- 
ing the sugar fields' with ports or with inland towns 
having railroad communications. Telegraph and 



Governor of Cuba 115 

telephone lines were extended to every town of 
size, and by the time the island was transferred to 
the Cuban government, three hundred post- 
offices had been established. The customs service 
was reorganized and a modem system of ac- 
counting and auditing established and maintained. 
Wood expended about $15,000,000 of the Military 
Government's money for these public works. i 

What astonished the Cubans quite as much as 
the actual amount of improvements accomplished 
was the fact that the cost of everything done was 
so small. One instance will show the difference in 
prices paid for public works under Spanish and 
American rule. Shortly before the United States 
interfered, the Spanish Military Governor of 
Santiago had built a quarter of a mile of macadam 
pavement along the Santiago waterfront. The 
cost was $180,000. A few months later Wood's 
engineers laid down five miles of asphalt pavement 
in Santiago at a total cost of $175,000. 

Wood succeeded in performing his enormous 
task of rehabilitating the island with practically 
no friction, all the educated and enlightened 
Cubans and the vast majority of the Cuban people 
cooperating heartily with him. An explanation 
of his success may be had from the following 
episode illustrating his method of dealing with the 
people. We quote from an article pubHshed in 



116 The Life of Leonard Wood 

McClures Magazine when Wood was Military 
Governor of Santiago, written by Ray Stannard 
Baker, the man whom President Wilson appointed 
as head of the American Press Bureau at the late 
Peace Conference in Paris: 

I shall never forget a visit I made with General Wood 
and his Staff to Guantanamo. The Governor of San- 
tiago has a passion for appearing unexpectedly in out- 
of-the way places in order to see the machinery of his 
government in its e very-day work. If there happens 
to be a particularly hea\y rain storm, with impassable 
roads, the Governor may confidently be expected. It 
was raining torrents when we visited Guantanamo 
and it was Sunday morning. A little group of Cubans 
stood on the wharf at Caimanera and watched the 
Americans coming up from the launch. When a Span- 
ish governor arrived there were always flags and music 
and crowds; but the American Governor — what a 
wonder he was! He was clad exactly like the other 
men of the party, in a brown khaki suit. He wore a 
peaked cavalry hat and buff leather riding leggings and 
spurs. His only distinguished mark was the star on 
his shoulder, the insignia of a Brigadier-General, and 
that was too high up for any of the little Cubans to see. 

Guantanamo is a typical east Cuban to^ni of some 
10,000 inhabitants. On this Sunday morning it was 
swimming in clay mud, and wore an indescribable air 
of apathy and disheartenment. The faces at the doors 
were tired and lustreless, and even the clinking of the 
spurred heels of the Americans on the narrow flag walks 
failed to arouse any marked interest. Perhaps they 



Governor of Cuba 117 

didn't know that it was the Governor who passed. In 
a big, bare, dilapidated room with barred windows 
a conference was held with the mayor and city council. 
The mayor was a small, dry, brown old man, very 
smugly clad in a black suit. In his curl-brim straw hat 
he wore the coloured cockade of a Cuban general — the 
only bit of colour about him — he carried a curious tor- 
toise-shell cane, on which he leaned with both hands. 
He sat next to the American Governor, and, oddly 
enough, exactly beneath a picture of Admiral Dewey, 
and solemnly watched each speaker. The city coun- 
cil was made up very much like an American village 
board, of the apothecary, the wheelwright, the doctor, 
and so on; but the members varied in colour from the 
pure olive of the Spaniard to the shiny black of the 
full-blooded Negro. 

The Governor rose and greeted each man as he came 
in with serious politeness, for politeness is the bread of 
existence to the Cubans. After they were all seated 
and the conference had begun, in walked that typical 
Cuban institution, the agitating editor. He came with 
an indescribable bustle of importance and opposition, 
a dramatic effect unattainable by any Anglo-Saxon. 
His notebook and pencil were clearly in evidence, and 
he spurned the chair which was offered him. The 
dry old mayor looked at him with a solemn lack of 
interest; the American Governor saw him not at all. 
The chief of the rural guard was also there, a big, hand- 
some fellow, as straight and lithe as a bamboo-pole. 
A pistol tipped up the skirts of his coat. He wore 
black patent-leather leggings, silver spurs, and a white 
linen uniform with black stripings, which set him off 
with jaunty consequence. 



118 The Life of Leonard Wood 

At first the talk (through an interpreter) was of 
money. They had not yet received their allowance 
from the customs fund, and General Wood explained 
why it was delayed. The apothecary then reported 
that they had decided to build a fine yellow fever hos- 
pital of stone; but General Wood advised a wooden 
structure, with a wide veranda, and he explained with 
the ready knowledge of a skilled physician how difficult 
it was to disinfect a stone building. The grave old 
mayor nodded his head; the American Governor was wise. 
"Tell them," said General Wood, "that they should get 
together and build a good schoolhouse. They would 
have the honour of constructing the first one in Cuba." 

But the mayor and council were silent — schoolhouses 
did not interest them. They discussed the new water 
works system on which the Americans were spending 
$100,000; and they wanted a stable for the horses 
of the rural guard, a subject which the Governor referred 
to the local American commandant for investigation. 

"Tell them," said General Wood, "that I haven't 
heard any complaints from here," at which compliment 
the council nodded in deep appreciation, and the mayor 
even smiled. 

"They wish to thank you," said the interpreter, 
"for the interest which you take in the town," and 
then it was the Governor's turn to bow graciously. 
The immediate business being now completed, the 
Governor shook hands all around, addressing those 
about him readily in Spanish. And with this the 
conference ended. 

That the American occupation was so singu- 
larly devoid of disorder was principally due to 



Governor of Cuba 119 

Wood's ability to gauge the temper and character 
of the Cuban people. During the first months 
of the American occupation the Cubans were 
especially bitter in their hatred toward the Span- 
ish, and prisoners of war had to be closely guarded 
from a certain element among the native soldiers. 
After the evacuation of the Spanish troops, several 
clashes occurred between Cuban and Spanish 
civihans, none of them serious. 

The following story illustrates Wood's method 
of dealing with outbreaks of this sort. 

The General was writing at his desk in the 
Palace in Santiago one night. At the entrance 
stood a lone American sentry armed with a rifle. 
The soldier observed a gathering of men in the 
Plaza across from the San Carlos Club, the mem- 
bership of which was almost exclusively Spanish. 
As the people seemed quiet and there were no 
restrictions placed on public meetings, the sentry 
paid no special attention to the crowd until sud- 
denly it surged toward the club. In an instant 
the crowd had become a yelling mob which now 
began throwing stones, bricks, and other missiles 
against the club windows and doors. 

General Wood was working calmly at his desk 
when the sentry entered to report the disturb- 
ance. 

**I know it," said General Wood without looking 



120 The Life of Leonard Wood 

up from his papers, "I have heard the row. 
We'll go right over and stop it." 

Then, without any haste or excitement, he picked 
up his riding crop — the only weapon, by the way, 
that he ever carried — and accompanied by the 
one American soldier, he walked across the street. 
They pushed their way through the mob until 
they came to the club's main entrance where 
several men were trying to force the door. 

"Now shove them back, sentry," said Wood, 
calmly. 

The soldier swung his rifle around, bruising a 
few obstreperous Cubans, and in less than a minute 
a space was cleared in front of the club. 

"Now shoot the first man who places his foot 
upon that step," said the General in Spanish, rais- 
ing his voice so that the mob could hear his order. 

Then Wood turned and walked back to the 
Palace, and inside of a few minutes the crowd had 
melted away. An American General, armed 
with a riding whip, and one soldier, carrying a rifle, 
had quelled what had promised to develop into a 
bloody riot, and not a shot had been fired. 

Another man placed in Wood's position might 
have called for troops, and the attack on the club 
might have turned into a real battle between 
American soldiers and Cuban civiHans. Wood 
knew the people he was dealing with. 



Governor of Cuba 121 

At another time, after he had sent three invita- 
tions to a Cuban official of Spanish blood and train- 
ing and the latter had failed to appear. Wood 
despatched a squad of soldiers to bring his man, 
"and I want you to bring him right away," he said. 
A few minutes later the soldiers carried into Gen- 
eral Wood's office the official clad only in his 
pajamas. Thereafter he always appeared promptly 
when asked to come to the General's office. 
' While he was in Santiago, General Wood suf- 
fered greatly from malarial fever. One night, 
when he had gone to his residence in the outskirts 
of the city, he received a telephone message saying 
that a riot had occurred at San Luis, a village 
about twenty miles out on the Santiago railway. 
Wood had a temperature of 105, and he was so 
sick and dizzy that he staggered when he walked. 
Nevertheless, he drove back to the city, summoned 
his chief signal officer. Captain J. E. Brady, and 
rushed over to the headquarters of the Signal 
Corps, where Captain Brady sat down at the 
telegraph instrument while the General issued his 
orders summoning members of the Cuban Rural 
Guard and the officers of the American troops 
stationed at San Luis. He spent three hours 
issuing orders, questioning and investigating the 
cause of the riot. He was so ill that his officers 
begged him to go home, but Wood stuck till he had 



122 The Life of Leonard Wood 

finished his preHminary investigation. The fol- 
lowing day, still racked with fever, he went to San 
Luis to complete his inquiry. 

We have touched on the bitterness displayed 
by the Cubans for the Spanish residents of the 
island, a bitterness somewhat akin to that which 
raged in the hearts of our own revolutionists 
against the British loyalists of the United States 
at the close of our War of Independence. We 
know how long it has taken for this nation to for- 
get the scars of its wounds received in wars with 
Britain, and we therefore can better understand 
the feelings of the native Cubans. In many cases 
civil wars and wars between people of kindred 
blood ties are the crudest and engender the worst 
after effects. 

Cuba had a large population of Spanish birth, 
and it became one of Wood's many duties to act 
as conciliator between the native and Spanish 
elements. This work he undertook the more 
willingly as the bravery and gallantry of the^ 
Spanish army and navy, fighting against over- 
whelming odds, had aroused the admiration of our 
people. Here Wood displayed the talents of a real 
diplomat. 

It so happened that the inauguration ball given 
in honour of President Palma, the first president 
of the Cuban Republic, and the members of the 



Governor of Cuba 123 

new Cuban Congress, took place the night of King 
Alfonso's birthday, so there were two celebrations 
in Havana. At the Spanish Club which reeked with 
memories of cruel and incompetent military dicta- 
tors, Spanish loyalists were drinking the health of 
their young monarch about the time that President 
and Senora Palma were leading the grand march 
in the state palace. 

General Wood took a bold course. He gathered 
the principal members of the new Congress and 
took them over to the Spanish Club, where Cuban 
officials, Spaniards and American officers toasted 
King Alfonso and fraternized with true Latin 
enthusiasm. The President of the Club and the 
leading members of the Spanish community then 
joined Wood and his party and went to the in- 
augural ball, where they drank the health of the 
Cuban Republic. It is difficult to overestimate 
the significance of this little incident in creating 
better feeling between Cuba and the Spanish na- 
tion. 

Wood's success in Cuba was largely due to his 
genius for selecting able men to assist him, and 
letting them go unhindered about their work as 
long as they did it satisfactorily. He did not try 
to do everything himself. No man could have 
succeeded in Wood's novel and gigantic task who 
was not able and willing to trust other men. He 



124 The Life of Leonard Wood 

gave Dr. Alexis Everett Frye and Lieutenant 
Matthew E. Hanna a free rein in building up 
Cuba's system of education. He drew on the 
ability and experience of E. R. Olcott, General 
•Grenville M. Dodge and Sir William Van Horn 
to assist him in rewriting Cuba's railway laws and 
building much of the present railway system of the 
island. He backed Major Walter Reed when the 
latter came to him for money and authority to 
make his final experiments which resulted in the 
conquest of yellow fever. He selected or helped 
select scores of Cubans, many of them men of 
exceptional ability, to head the various depart- 
ments of the government. 

Acting in behalf of the United States Govern- 
ment, the Governor-General officially turned over 
the island of Cuba to the Cuban Republic on 
May 20, 1902. The occasion was marked by 
impressive ceremony. Shortly before noon. Wood 
read the document of transfer in the Government 
Palace, Havana. President Palma responded. 
At twelve o'clock, noon, a detachment of the 
Seventh United States Cavalry lowered the Ameri- 
can flag amid the thunder of saluting gims, and 
the Cuban banner was raised where the Stars and 
Stripes had been flying throughout the occupation. 
About one hundred and fifty thousand people 
witnessed the birth of the Cuban Republic. Im- 



Governor of Cuba 125 

mediately following the transfer Wood went 
aboard a ship which carried him to the United 
States. His work in Cuba was finished. Gover- 
nor General Wood stepped out of an office which 
commanded world-wide attention and became 
Brigadier General Leonard Wood, U. S. A., unas- 
signed. 

Some time after Wood had departed from Cuba, 
Lord Cromer who was retiring as Consul General 
of Egypt, was discussing with some Englishmen 
the choice of his successor. "Unfortunately the 
best man for the post is not available," said Lord 
Cromer. "He is an American, General Leonard 
Wood." 

Wood's Cuban administration was marred by 
only one unpleasant incident, the so-called Rath- 
bone affair. Major Estes G. Rathbone, formerly 
Assistant Postmaster General, was Director-Gen- 
eral of Posts in Cuba. He was charged with 
wastefulness of public funds, and unwarranted ex- 
penditure of public money for personal use, and 
together with some of his associates, was brought to 
trial, convicted, and sent to jail. 

The whole case should have ended there, but 
Rathbone had powerful friends, and one friend 
in particular of the two-fisted, fighting sort. This 
was Senator Marcus A. Hanna of Ohio, then in 
the height of his political power as RepubHcan 



126 The Life of Leonard Wood 

leader of the Upper House. Rathbone was ar- 
rested in Havana on July 28, 1900, about seven 
months after Wood had taken office as Governor 
General. Wood had hardly had thne to establish 
himself firmly in his position. He owed his ap- 
pointment to a Republican administration of 
which Hanna was reputed to be the actual, if not 
the titular leader. Rathbone had been Hanna's 
political supporter and friend; and whatever his 
faults (and his enemies were never timid about 
enumerating them) Hanna's foes could never 
accuse him of ingratitude. He was a man of 
generous impulses, just the sort of a man who 
would fight for an old friend whether the latter 
were riding on the crest of fortune or on his way to 
prison. 

After Secretary of War Root had appointed him 
Governor of Cuba, General Wood had gone to 
Washington to confer with Mr. Root. He had 
called on President INIcKinley who greeted him by 
saying: 

"What can I do for you. General Wood?" 

"Only this, give me your full support as long as 
you can trust me, and when you cannot do this, 
get rid of me." 

If President McKinley had not trusted Wood, 
this was the time to remove him from office, for 
not only Hanna but also other influential politi- 



Governor of Cuba 127 

cians from the President's own state were fighting 
the Governor of Cuba. They claimed that Rath- 
bone had been unjustly accused and "railroaded" 
in the courts through the direct agency of Gov- 
ernor-General Wood, while the latter was himself 
guilty of extravagance in office and of accepting 
presents from a gambling house in Havana. He 
was accused of interfering improperly with the 
Cuban judiciary in the Rathbone case. 

Wood saw President McKinley and asked to be 
relieved in case the President was dissatisfied. 

"I wouldn't want you to persecute Rathbone," 
said the President, "but if you prosecute him I'll 
support you." 

The Rathbone case dragged on through the 
courts accumulating fresh complications at every 
turn and it was not until March 24, 1902, that he 
was sentenced. A few months later he was par- 
doned by a general amnesty of the Cuban gov- 
ernment. 

The fight on Wood resulting from the Rathbone 
prosecution continued until long after the former 
Director -General of Posts of Cuba had been 
pardoned. This fight eventually crystallized into 
formal charges filed with the Senate MiHtary 
Affairs Committee. Wood had been recommended 
for promotion to the rank of Major-General in the 
regular army, and Rathbone's friends endeavored 



128 The Life of Leonard Wood 

to block the confirmation. But the Senate 
Committee on Military Affairs confirmed the pro- 
motion of Wood as Major-General. In its report 
the Committee disposed of the talk that other 
Spanish-American War officers had been slighted 
while Wood had received more than his due share 
/by saying: "Not one of them has a better claim, 
by reason of his past record and experience as a 
commander, than has General Wood; and in the 
opinion of the Committee no one has, in view of 
his present rank, equal claim to his [Wood's] on 
the ground of merit measured by the considera- 
tions suggested." 

It was true that at one time he was only a regi- 
mental doctor, but this fact did not mar his 
military record, which spoke for itself. He had 
won the Congressional Medal of Honour for 
courage and devotion to duty in the campaign 
against the Apaches. General Miles and General 
Lawton had cited him for his conduct in the 
campaign. Wood had no pull with either of these 
officers at the time he joined the army as a con- 
tract surgeon, nor with Cleveland or McKinley 
until he proved his character and ability to these 
presidents from opposing parties. 

Generals Wheeler, Shafter, Young, and other 
high army officers of the Spanish-American War 
did not agree with Wood's accusers that he had 



Governor of Cuba 129 

"performed no military service of distinctive or 
special merit in the Cuban campaign." Wheeler 
had cited him for his courage and skill in the 
Battle of Las Guasimas. Shafter had recom- 
mended him for promotion as Brigadier-General, 
and had later appointed him Military Governor of 
Santiago. Young had commended his "magni- 
ficent behaviour in the field." The Secretary of 
War, Elihu Root, testified before the Committee 
that he had appointed Wood Governor-General 
solely on his official record and without consulting 
President McKinley. 

While in Cuba, Wood became an enthusiastic 
player of the Spanish game known as " Jai Alai," 
resembling racquets, and affording excellent physi- 
cal exercise. When he was about to leave the 
island. Wood was presented with a beautiful silver 
service by prominent Cubans known to him as 
"Jai Alai," players and fans. Secretary Root 
told the Senate Committee that "to have refused 
this and other gifts made at the same time would 
have been discourteous, injurious, and unjusti- 
fiable." The fact that some Cubans placed bets 
on "Jai Alai, " just as Americans have been known 
to hazard money on such purely amateur sports as 
football games, gave Wood's enemies a peg on which 
to hang the false charge that he was the patron and 
friend of a gambling institution. Secretary Root 



130 The Life of Leonard Wood 

further testified that President McKinley had 
first picked out Wood for promotion to the rank of 
Major-General and that President Roosevelt on 
succeeding to the office of Chief Executive would 
have been compelled "to put him out of that rank 
and dissent from the judgment of President Mc- 
Kinley if he had failed to nominate him." 

The Rathbone case is dead and buried these 
many years, but to-day Daniel R. Hanna, the son 
of the late Senator Hanna, is supporting the 
candidacy of General Wood for nomination for the 
Presidency by the Republican party. 

Leonard Wood's Cuban administration is unique 
in the annals of colonial history. The simple and 
incontrovertible fact is that nothing like it has 
ever been accomplished. Cuba was one of the most 
tragic spectacles among the nations of the world 
when the Americans came to her rescue. Years of 
revolutionary struggles, crushed by brute force 
only to break forth again, had bankrupted the 
island, exiled its leaders and exhausted the energy 
of the people. Cuba in her struggle for freedom 
was so far spent that even the family structure was 
beginning to crumble. Such was the Cuba that 
Leonard Wood, a self-taught statesman, a self- 
trained executive, a self-made business man, built 
into a prosperous state in two years and a half. 

Modern history oifers instances of great service 



Governor of Cuba 131 

performed by statesmen and private individuals 
for nations, but in each case the nation in question 
lias been "a going concern" with something on 
which to build. Cuba was not "a going concern." 
There was no governmental machinery on which to 
build, and Wood was alone. He had to build his 
machinery and select his staff. Cuba was bank- 
rupt. In two years and a half he raised and spent 
more than $58,000,000. He left Cuba with more 
than half a million in the treasury. 

General Wood received no great material reward 
for his Cuban labours, but he reaped the richest 
harvest which a man of his type could desire, the 
gratitude of the Cuban people and the high respect 
of all thoughtful and liberal-minded men who had 
followed his painstaking labours. When the 
island of Cuba was transferred to the newly es- 
tablished Republic, President Palma in his formal 
address to General Wood said: 

"I understand that, as far as possible, all 
pecuniary responsibilities contracted by the Mili- 
tary Government up to this date have been paid; 
that $100,000 or such portion thereof as may be 
necessary, has been set aside to cover the expenses 
that may be occasioned by the liquidation and 
finishing up the obligations contracted by said 
government; and that there has been transferred 
to the Government of the Republic the sum of 



132 The Life of Leonard Wood 

$689,191.02, which constitutes the cash balance 
existing to-day in favour of the State. 

"I take this solemn occasion, which marks the 
fulfillment of the honoured promise of the Govern- 
ment and people of the United States in regard to 
the island of Cuba, and in which our country is 
made a ruling nation, to express to you, the worthy 
representative of that grand people, the immense 
gratitude which the people of Cuba feel toward the 
American nation, toward its illustrious President, 
Theodore Roosevelt, and toward you for the efforts 
you have put forth for the successful accomplish- 
ments of such a precious ideal." 

Wood was showered with congratulatory mes- 
sages from the most prominent men of the nation 
on the success of his work, the most remarkable of 
which may be found in the official archives of the 
War Department. General Orders No. 38, dated 
March 25, 1903, issued by Secretary of War Root, 
relieving General Wood "from further duty in con- 
nection with the affairs of the Mihtary Government 
of Cuba," reads in part as follows: 

Out of an utterly prostrate colony a free republic 
was built up, the work being done with such signal 
ability, integrity, and success that the new nation started 
under more favourable conditions than has ever 
before been the case in any single instance among her 
fellow Spanish-American republics. This record stands 



Governor of Cuba 133; 

alone in history, and the benefit conferred thereby on 
the people of Cuba was no greater than the honour- 
conferred upon the people of the United States. 

Richard Olney. Cleveland's Secretary of State,, 
sent him this message: 

I congratulate you personally on the most successful 
and deservedly successful career, whether as soldier or 
public man of any sort, that the Spanish War and its. 
consequences have brought to the front. 

John Hay, Secretary of State during Roosevelt's 
administration, wrote Wood a note "with sincere- 
congratulations on the approaching fruition of all 
your splendid work for the regeneration of Cuba," 
and Senator Piatt, of Connecticut, wrote of his, 
"admiration for your administration under difiB- 
culties greater, I think, tlian have ever had to be en- 
countered by any one man in reconstruction work." 

" Could any other nation have done what we did 
for Cuba.f'" General Wood was once asked. 

"Yes, Great Britain," he answered, "but 
Britain's cost in lives and money would have been 
greater." Then, after a pause, he added with a 
smile, "And Britain might have stayed longer." 

After he left Cuba, Wood was made a member of 
a military commission which was sent to Europe to.. 



134 The Life of Leonard Wood 

attend the German maneuvers. The American 
Commission included Generals H. C. Corbin and 
S, B. M. Young. Having shortly before finished 
his administration in Cuba, which had given him 
world-wide recognition, Wood naturally received 
a great deal of attention among the high military 
officials of all the nations who gathered to ob- 
serve the German war game. The American 
officers met the British mission headed by Lord 
Roberts and including General John French, who 
was later to become famous in the World War. 
Kaiser Wilhelm, then riding toward the height 
of his glory, was especially attentive to the Ameri- 
can representatives. 



VII 

Pacifier of the Philippines 

IT IS said that when Henry Morton Stanley 
returned to the office of the New York Herald after 
winning world-wide fame by finding Livingston 
in the wilds of Africa, he was assigned to report 
a police court case of minor importance. It was an 
assignment of the sort that "Cub" reporters are 
given to sharpen their journalistic teeth. Stan- 
ley, a veteran journalist and one of the world's 
foremost explorers, was deeply offended. 

When Leonard Wood had finished his Cuban 
administration, he was, like Stanley, a man of 
international reputation without an assignment. 
His rank was that of Brigadier-General of the 
regular army. But what job was there for a 
Brigadier-General to perform commensurate in 
importance and dignity with that of establishing 
a whole country like Cuba in business? He wrote 
the final report of his administration; he went to 
Europe as formerly mentioned to witness the 
German maneuvers, and when he came back he was 
still without an assignment. 

135 



136 The Life of Leonard Wood 

One day President Roosevelt was telling Wood 
of his troubles in the Philippines where a civil 
government had been established, but where 
the natives in some sections, notably in the Moro 
provinces of the island of IVIindanao, were not 
inclined to be very civil. William Howard Taft 
was Governor-General and was making a great 
success of his administration except for the fact 
that the Moros were "cutting up" as usual. The 
President remarked that he would have to send 
someone on the diflBcult and dangerous errand of 
pacifying the Moros, who were mostly Mohamme- 
dans and who had never in their history, so far as 
anybody knew, behaved themselves properly. 

"Well, why don't you send me.'^" asked Wood. 

It was worse, if anything, than Stanley's re- 
ported police court assignment. It was a highly 
dangerous and mean job with little glory at- 
tached and all the discomforts of the tropical 
jungle assured. It was another Apache job with 
scores of thousands of fanatical Moros and other 
Filipinos substituted for the desperadoes of Ge- 
ronimo's band. And yet Wood asked for it. 
Having boiled the Cuban fever out of his bones, 
be had become accustomed, presumably, to a few 
creature comforts. He had won great honours 
as administrator, and yet he was willing to under- 
take the humble task of policing the most unruly 



Pacifier of the Philippines 137 

section of the Philippines. The work called for 
subjugating and taming the little brown men of the 
Moro country and the waters adjacent, for they 
were amphibious in their lawlessness. They were 
raiders by land and pirates by sea. They gloried 
in their defiance of Uncle Sam's law and order. 
They were head hunters, slave traders. They 
practised polygamy, and despised all persons 
whose skin was white. Why not send some young 
colonel or captain down there to bake under the 
equatorial sun, to round up the Moros, spank the 
naughtiness out of them, and sharpen his own 
military fangs .f* 

But Roosevelt regarded the work to be done in 
the Moro country as far more imjx)rtant than a 
mere p>olice job. He wanted the seeds of civiliza- 
tion planted in the minds of these people. He 
wanted the job well done so that it would not have 
to be done over again. So he sent Wood over to the 
War Department to see Secretary of War Root 
with the result that the former Cuban ruler be- 
came military commander and civil governor of 
the Moro country. 

His jurisdiction covered the island of Mindanao, 
the second largest in the Philippine group, more than 
36,000 square miles in area, and also the Sulu group 
and other islands in the southern part of the archi- 
pelago. There were about twenty different tribes 



138 The Life of Leonard Wood 

in this territory, speaking different dialects. 
Most of them kept up intermittent fighting against 
each other, and all were ready to join forces against 
any foreigner. The population consisted of about 
50,000 Christian Filipmos, 250,000 Mohammedan 
Moros, and some 300,000 other natives of different 
religious professions ranging from Confucianism to 
plain paganism. 

General Wood took the eastern route to the 
Philippines. During his term of office in Cuba, 
he had kept closely in touch with the developments 
of Dutch and British colonial administrative work, 
,and he wanted to visit some of the colonies of these 
Powers. He stopped in Egypt where he was the 
guest of Lord Cromer, the Consul-General, who had 
often expressed his admiration for Wood's work in 
Cuba, saying that his administration was the 
finest in modem colonial history. After a brief 
tour of Egypt, Wood proceeded to India, Ceylon, 
and the Straits Settlements to make further in- 
vestigations into the subject of colonial adminis- 
tration. He accepted an invitation of the Dutch 
Government to visit Java, whose native popula- 
tion resembles closely the people of the Philippines. 
In the course of this journey Wood talked not only 
with the most enlightened and successful colonial 
administrators but, went out among the natives 
and questioned them about their problems. In an 



Pacifier of the Philippines 139 

article published in the World's Work, Robert 
Hammond Murray states that Wood collected 
case after case of books and statistics during this 
trip. After he had settled in Manila, Wood 
received a visit from a friend whom he took into 
his hbrary. The walls were covered with reports 
on colonial government. 

"I have gathered these since I came out here," 
remarked the General. 

"It's a fine collection. When do you expect to 
find time to read them?" 

"Read them!" replied Wood. "I have already 
read every line in every one of them. They have 
helped me a lot." 

Wood arrived in the Philippines in July, 1903, 
under a cloud of suspicion and hostility. During 
his first few weeks in the islands there was no 
American army officer in the Far East more un- 
popular. 

He was still under charges pending before the 
Senate Military Affairs Committee, referred to in 
the preceding chapter. That was bad enough. 
But after all, many able army officers have to face 
charges of some sort in their careers. The army 
officers in the Philippines cared not so much for 
the official charges against Wood. He had neither 
been tried nor convicted. What they did care 
about was the charges behind the charges. Wood 



140 The Life of Leonard Wood 

had not been tried by the Senate Committee, but 
he had been tried by the newspapers and accused 
of being an administration pet, and these press 
reports had reached the PhiHppines. E\'idently 
some of the papers accusing Wood of being Roose- 
velt's favourite pro-consul had forgotten that this 
man in the summer of 1900, while still in the pro- 
bationary stage of his Cuban administration, had 
locked horns with Mark Hanna, the most f>ovverf ul 
man in the McKinley administration. 

And there was another reason for the hostility 
against Wood. He was not a West Pointer, not 
of the inner circle. There was a distinct tendency 
among the young and old graduates of the Military 
Academy to look askance upon a man who had 
entered tlie army as a surgeon and had gained such 
rapid promotion. 

Wood spent a week in Manila where Taft gave 
him every opportunity to become acquainted with 
conditions in the islands. Then he left for 
Mindanao. 

In Mindanao General Wood proved a distinct 
surprise to his critics. The American officers 
found that the White House judgment on this quiet, 
middle-aged man with the weather-beaten face 
and the body of a hardened trooper was correct. 
He fell right into the swiug of his Indian fighting 
habits, and before he had been long in Mindanao 



Pacifier of the Philippines 141 

his officers had discovered his qualities of leader- 
ship. He knew how to lead, issue commands, 
direct. He demanded no physical comforts which 
his subordinates could not share. He showed calm 
judgment in handling the perplexing problems of 
the native population. i 

The taming of the Moros was a slow, tedious 
business, highly dangerous, requiring infinite 
patience and tact in dealing with the native 
rulers and the suspicious Moslem population. 
The former feared the loss of power and the latter 
were inflamed against the Americans by their 
chiefs and other religious leaders who declared that 
the foreigners desired to destroy their faith. 
Wood sent native couriers throughout the province 
proclaiming to the population that the Americans 
would not interfere with the social or religious 
habits of any one, but that piracy, brigandage, 
murder, and slavery must cease at once, and that 
the armies of the United States would never with- 
draw imtil such lawlessness came to an end. He 
received in reply scores of messages from tribal 
chieftains — rajahs, maharajahs, sultans, and datos 
— ^that the GeneraFs word was law; and right on 
the heels of these conciliatory pledges would come 
refK)rts of piracy raids along the coast of Borneo, 
or of the capture of a score of friendly Filipinos 
by some Mohammedan slave trader. 



142 The Life of Leonard Wood 

It took Wood more than two years to wipe out 
human slavery and piracy in Mindanao and the 
Sulu Islands, patch up the age-old feuds between 
the various tribes, and restore friendly intercourse 
between factions which had been fighting each 
other as far back as the tribal traditions went. 
It took a vast amount of patient work to teach 
these people the simplest kindergarten principles 
of government and trade relationship. But Wood 
managed to convince the people in the uplands 
that it was not only profitable but safe for them 
to brmg their produce down to the valleys and the 
coast villages to sell and barter. Hitherto such 
procedure had been unthinkable. The natives 
who ventured beyond the limits of their tribal 
territory had been robbed, enslaved, and perhaps 
killed. 

There was a good deal of scattered fighting, 
mostly of the guerrilla type. But all the cam- 
paigns called for more of physical endurance 
and watchfulness than actual fighting. W^ood led 
in person many of the expeditions against ob- 
streperous slave traders, walking for miles over the 
floating bogs of the lake country, or climbing 
mountain ranges. He headed an expedition 
against about 70,000 hostile Moros in the vicinity 
of Lake Lanao. In this campaign his reputation 
for personal bravery was greatly enhanced among 



Pacifier of tlie Philippines 143 

his troops through an mcident which came near 
costing him his Hfe. 

Wood's party was proceeding cautiously along 
a trail over a jungle-covered floating bog. The 
interpreter of the party stepped into the tall grass 
and was immediately surrounded by hostile Moros. 
Wood was the first man to reach the interpreter 
who was bravely returning the fire of the enemy. 
The Moros began to retreat when they saw Wood 
and the other soldiers, but kept on firing. The 
General picked up a rifle and fought in the ranks 
with his men until the hostile party had fled, 
leaving several dead and wounded. 

The principal engagement was the taking of the 
stronghold of Dalu Ali, one of the most influential 
of the Moro chiefs. It did not amount to much 
as a military contest. However, it took more than 
two years to run Dalu Ali down, and his power 
was never broken till he was killed in 1905 in an 
engagement with the Americans led by Captain 
Frank R. McCoy, Wood's aide-de-camp. Ali was 
notorious throughout the southern archipelago as 
a raider, slave dealer, and despot. He had built 
himself a fort in the Cottabato Valley. He had 
about 2,000 Moro warriors, and was well supplied 
with arms and ammunition. All's men terrorized 
the neighbouring country, raiding friendly and 
peaceable native settlements. 



144 Tlie Life of Leonard Wood 

The job of digging Ali'out of his stronghold was 
exceptionally arduous. The wily chieftain had 
built his fortress within a network of lakes, rivers, 
and swamps. Wood's soldiers declare that the. 
General took a hand many a time in dragging 
fieldpieces over especially difficult spots in the 
swamps. Dalu All's pretentious establishment 
was easily destroyed after the Americans reached 
it. His band was annihilated, but the cliief, 
himself, escaped. Wood kept his men on All's 
trail until the latter fell. AH's death broke the 
resistance of the Moros. 

The change of sentiment toward Wood among 
the American officers in the Philippines may be 
indicated by the following statement of Colonel 
Duncan, a veteran of the Philippine wars: 

"Before I met General Wood hisvery name stirred 
indignation in me. I couldn't help feeling that 
the promotion of a mere doctor over the heads 
of so many experienced and deserving officers was 
an outrage on the service. The bill which made 
me a Colonel made him a Major-General, yet I 
was so bitterly opposed to his promotion that I 
was willing to see the bill defeated and lose my 
colonelcy. Afterward I served under him in the 
Philippines and I found him to be one of the big- 
gest men I had ever come in contact with, a mag- 
nificent officer with a remarkably large way of 



Pacifier of the Philippines 145 

looking at and dealing with things. He is a great 
soldier." 

It was Wood's ready, even-handed justice to- 
ward everybody under his command, whether 
natives, army officers, or privates, which appealed 
to the men who served under him. Wood beheved 
in basing promotions on merit rather than on the 
number of years of service. He, himself, had been 
promoted over the heads of many other officers 
by McKinley. 

To a young officer whom General Wood had 
quickly promoted he said: 

I "You have been a captain only fifteen or twenty 
minutes and you're mighty young to be a major; 
but you have earned your promotion. Try and 
bear it modestly. There are lots of young men in 
the army who are as good as you, and better, per- 
haps, but unfortunately for them I do not know 
them. I do know you. If you hadn't earned it, 
you wouldn't have got it. 

"As you know, I believe in promotion by selec- 
tion. You are an example. Take a class of one 
hundred young men who have graduated in law 
and medicine. Ten of them, perhaps, will be ex- 
traordinarily successful; ten will make a great 
success; ten others will be fairly successful, and so 
on down the line until you come to the fellows who 
are just getting on. Why should young men in 



146 The Life of Leonard Wood 

the army be different? Men are alike, and the 
young men in the army resemble the rest in their 
quahties and the degrees of their attainments. 
Why should the best and the most capable be held 
down to the level of those who just get on, who 
merely do enough to hold their commissions by a 
system of promotion by seniority? It robs the 
army of incentive. Competition spurs on men, 
in or out of the army." 

Because of their close friendship, the impression 
always existed in the public mind that Wood 
owed to Roosevelt his rapid rise in the army. John 
J. Leary, Jr., in his reminiscences of Roosevelt, 
published in McClure's Magazine, gives Roose- 
velt's own words on the subject: 

One thing which annoyed Roosevelt was the public's 
persistence in believing that it was to him that General 
Leonard Wood owed his big jump in the army and to 
its confounding the case of Wood with that of Pershing. 

"The man they are thinking of," he used to say, 
"is Pershing. It was he I jumped over the heads of 
several hundred other army officers. I'd do it again, 
by thunder, if the same occasion arose! Wood got his 
big jump from McKinley, and all I ever gave him were 
the promotions due him in the usual course of seniority. 
I've tried a hundred times to straighten this out in the 
public mind, but I don't suppose I'll ever succeed. 
The public seems to want to believe this myth. 

"President McKinley gave Wood his big jump in the 



Pacifier of the Philippines 147 

regular establishment, after he took him out of the 
Rough Riders. I gave Pershing his big jump long after 
I had succeeded Mr. McKinley in the White House. . . . 

"Sims of the navy, another man I was accused of 
favouring, Mr. Wilson has also chosen for important 
work, fairly good proof that my judgment of these 
men when they were juniors was sound." 

"But he has not approved of Wood," I suggested. 

"No, he has not. He has used Wood very badly and 
very unfairly. I might say he has also been very 
foolish in the way he has handled Wood. 

"If he wanted to sidetrack him he could have done it 
by sending him to Hawaii or the Philippines and leaving 
him there. But he did not have the courage to do this; 
he adopted half-way measures and as a result Wood 
has been like a sore thumb to him — always in the way 
and doing things so well that the public won't allow 
Mr, Wilson to forget him. 

"Wood is a big man who can look on a problem from 
every angle. He makes few mistakes, but he's big 
enough, when he makes one, to admit the error, 
and he always has patience with the other fellow's 
opinion. 

"I am very fond of Wood, and I know he is of me, but 
in my years in the presidency Wood never took any 
advantage of our intimacy or in the slightest degree 
presumed on our friendship. If anything he leaned 
backward in this respect." 

While he was in the Philippine Islands, General 
Wood met with a painful accident which perma- 
nently impaired his left leg. He has wallved with a 



148 Tlie Life of Leonard Wood 

decided limp ever since, but his general health has 
never been affected by his injury. 

While detachments of his forces were engaged 
in rounding up tlie different bands of outlaws which 
made Mindanao province unsafe, Wood lost no 
chances to get into personal touch with the native 
rulers, priests, and other leaders of the people to 
whom he explained the mission of the United 
States in the Philippines. He found the majority 
of the p>eople tired of their incessant civil wars and 
anxious for peace. Wood acted as judge in set- 
tling the feuds between the various tribes. He 
sought out the strongest Moslem chieftains and 
made them his allies in restoring peace and main- 
taining law and order. The Spaniards had ignored 
the natural leaders and as a result the ablest men 
of the islands were always arrayed against Spain. 

Wood took a diametrically oppKDsite course. He 
squatted cross-legged in the tents or palaces of the 
rajahs, tried to adjust their disputes with the civil 
government of Mindanao, and offered them friend- 
ship and posts of authority in their districts if 
they would maintain order. When the Moslem 
chiefs quoted their Koran to prove that human 
slavery was permissible, they were astounded to 
hear the American General quote another verse of 
the Koran advocating human freedom and simple 
justice to all persons. 



Pacifier of the Philippines 149 

"The Prophet has said that a man may have 
many wives," said one turbaned chief with a 
bejewelled scimitar in his belt. "It is so written 
in the Koran." 

"That is true," replied the General. "I have 
studied the Koran." 

This reply pleased the Moro chief greatly. 

"But the Prophet has said it would be better 
for a man if he had only one wife," added the 
General. "That was a very wise and true say- 
mg. 

Wood could not destroy the institution of 
plural marriages practised under the guise of 
religion, but he made no compromise on the 
subject of slavery. Here the Moro leaders had 
to give way completely. Slaves were released 
from their masters wherever American soldiers 
found them. Wood's stem commands to the 
Moros that they must give their women better 
treatment was also heeded. One of the traditions 
which Wood had to uproot was the Moros ' market 
valuation of human life. The natives from time 
immemorial had been accustomed to settle for 
murder by payments of set sums. The life of a 
freeman was worth fifty-two dollars and fifty 
cents; that of a freewoman, twenty-six dollars and 
twenty-five cents, and the price of a slave killed 
was about twelve dollars. 



150 TJie Life of Leonard Wood 

Wherever he found it possible. Wood established 
a school among the Moros, and by the time he 
left Mindanao, numerous Moro children were be- 
ing taught Enghsh in addition to their own dia- 
lects. Wood divided the Moro province into four 
districts, Davao, Lanao, Cottabato, and Zambo- 
ango, each under a district governor. These 
districts were in turn divided into smaller com- 
munities under native chiefs who were commis- 
sioned to represent the government. 

Wlien Wood came to IMindanao in the summer 
of 1903, the Moro province was the main source 
of trouble in the Philippines, the sorest spot 
on our map. Human slavery flourished and the 
natives were compelled to obey vicious and des- 
potic petty rulers. When Wood left IMindanao 
in April, 1906, it was a well-governed section of 
the Phihppines, Wood had brought peace and 
prosperity to our Moslem wards and established 
confidence in our institutions and respect for the 
United States in the hearts of the natives. He 
had to deal with more than a score of tribes 
speaking almost as many dialects and professing 
all sorts of religious beliefs. Wood reached them 
all with his message of civilization. The ridicu- 
lous little fortresses of mud and bamboo over 
which the little brown men fought were razed 
and in their places were erected schoolhouses. 



Pacifier of the Phili'ppines 151 

Once more Wood had succeeded brilliantly as an 
administrator largely because of his abundant hu- 
man intuition. 

There was comparatively little of bloodshed, 
but none of the Moros who fought the United 
States were inspired by patriotic motives. They 
were fighting to perpetuate their institution of 
slavery, their license to rob on the high seas and 
raid neighbouring Filipino tribes. 

Wood was transferred from Mindanao to take 
command of all our Philippine military forces 
numbering about twenty thousand troops. Dur- 
ing the two years he commanded the Philippine 
Division he transformed the whole defensive 
system of the island, making it more secure. In 
performing this work, there was required not only 
military acumen, but diplomatic tact. Our rela- 
tions with Japan were deHcate as usual and any 
radical changes involving preparedness measures 
were being closely watched by our Oriental neigh- 
bours, who had looked with anxiety on our ap- 
proach toward their shores. 

In the training of our Philippine army. Wood 
insisted on extensive bayonet practice. The 
criticisms he encountered for thus "wasting the 
time" of his soldiers was never answered until 
the late war proved that fighting with cold steel 
at close quarters, while an unpleasant feature 



152 The Life of Leonard Wood 

of warfare, is not obsolete. He instituted military 
athletic meets to encourage the officers and men to 
keep physically fit. He divided the year into two 
parts, the rainy season for garrison and the dry 
season for field duty. Just before he left Manila 
in the spring of 1908, he was the guest of honour 
at a Filipino banquet, the first military commander 
in the Philippines to be so honoured. 

In the Far East his name came to be linked with 
that of Kitchener. One prominent Englishman 
who had seen a good deal of General Wood re- 
marked that in England he would have gone 
farther than Kitchener, adding: 

"He has Kitchener's soldierly qualities and 
genius for administration, but he also has tact and 
statesmanship . ' ' 



vin 

Chief-of-Staff of the U. S. Army 

LEONARD WOOD'S career falls into four 
distinct periods from the time he joined the army 
in 1885 to the present time. 

First, the army period from July, 1885, to July, 
1898. 

Second, the period of administration and states- 
manship from July, 1898, when he became Military 
Governor of Santiago de Cuba and covering the 
Cuban and Philippine periods to May, 1908. 

Third, the preparedness period from May, 1908, 
to Armistice Day, November 11, 1918. 

Fourth, the reconstruction period, from Armis- 
tice Day to the present time, covering Wood's 
services in upholding law and order, his fight on the 
destructive radical groups of the country, and his 
campaign in behalf of constructive Americanism 
and justice for Labour. 

During his Cuban administration, Wood had 
been afforded glimpses of world politics as ex- 
pressed in trade rivalries of European powers in 

153 



154 The Ldfe of Leonard Wood 

the West Indies. As a military man he knew, of 
course, of the terrific military establishments 
under which Europe was staggering, and when he 
witnessed the maneuvers of the German army in 
1902, he became convinced, like most of our high 
army officers, that where there was so much war 
smoke a conflagration was likely to break out 
at almost any time. He was to receive further 
confirmation of his belief when in 1908 he left the 
Philippines. 

He returned by the way of Asia and Europe, 
and stopped in Ceylon, Singapore, Egypt, Malta, 
France, Germany, and Switzerland, But this 
time he was not studying colonial administration 
so much as military systems. He spent most of 
the summer in Switzerland. Officially, he was on 
leave of absence, recuperating from five years in 
the tropical jungles of Moroland. Unofficially, 
he was making an intensive study of the Swiss 
army system. Wlien he established the military 
training camps for college students in 1913 and 
later the Plattsburgh camp, he did not improvise 
his plans on the spur of the moment. He had 
been planning for years his military preparedness 
programme to suit the peculiar needs of his own 
country which he knew to be averse to militarism 
and which he knew could never become militaris- 
tic. 



Chief-of-Staff of the U. S. Army 155 

While he was in Switzerland, Austria-Hungary's 
time for liquidating the Dual Monarchy's obliga- 
tions with reference to Bosnia-Herzegovina ma- 
tured. Defying Russia and the Serb states, 
[Austria-Hungary annexed the provinces. Russia, 
the memory of her defeat by Japan only three 
years old, permitted this transgression of the 
Treaty of Berlin. While the diplomats were 
making bold gestures in every capital of Europe, 
Germany's army staged its maneuvers at Saar- 
brucken, ready at the War Lord's command to 
pounce on Europe. The army of France was on 
the Loire, poised for immediate action. Both of 
these tremendous forces Wood had the opportunity 
to study at field practice. Henry White, Ameri- 
can ambassador to France at the time, asked him 
what he thought of the French Army. 

"Despite the fame of the German military 
machine," answered Wood, "France in the next 
war will surprise the world by the fighting effect- 
iveness of her forces." 

This conclusion General Wood based on the 
relationship between the officers and the men of 
the French Army. He has always been a pro- 
found believer in the formula, attributed to 
Socrates, that the first duty of an army officer is 
"to look after the welfare of his men." 

He found that the French officers were trained 



156 The Life of Leonard Wood 

to treat their men with consideration and to look 
with human regard after their needs. He disliked 
profoundly the brutal and arrogant conduct of 
the German officers toward the common soldiers, 
who, while being treated like inferior beings, were 
commanded to fight like heroes. 

Throughout the French maneuvers. General 
Wood was attached to the headquarters of one 
of the army corps. WTien the war game was 
over, he visited Paris where he was presented to the 
President of the Republic and other high French 
officials. In recognition of his record in Cuba and 
the Philippines, he was made a Grand Officer of 
the Legion of Honour, a rank which in those days 
was seldom conferred on foreigners. However, 
the Government of the United States withheld 
from Wood permission to accept the decoration, 
and it was not until years later that American 
officers were granted the privilege in a general order 
to wear foreign medals. 

General Wood returned to the United States 
in the fall of 1908, his mind ffiled with plans for a 
greater and more difficult campaign than he had 
ever conducted in the field or in administrative 
office — that of arousing this nation to a sense of its 
insecurity in a world bristling with armaments, 
and moving the soft American colossus to insure its 
interests by reasonable military preparedness 



Chief-of-Staff of the U. S, Army 157 

against the war toward which Europe was headed. 
Science was annihilating distance and Wood 
reahzed that America's isolation was a thing of the 
past. The United States as a world power was 
bound to be seriously affected by any war dis- 
turbance in Europe. 

On his arrival in this country, Wood was placed 
in command of the Department of the East with 
headquarters on Governor's Island, one of the 
most important conmaands of the army in times of 
peace. He had been a general officer in the 
United States Army for more than ten years, but 
never during that time had he held a command at 
a home post. In fact, he had never held any 
actual command in this country except for a Httle 
more than a month in the spring of 1898 when as 
colonel of the Rough Riders he was enlisting and 
training his regiment in Texas. When he led 
detachments of troops on raids after the Indians 
in the Apache war, he had merely acted as a 
volunteer Une officer while his official status was 
that of a medical officer. 

When, in the spring of 1910, General Wood was 
sent as special ambassador to represent the 
United States at the centenary celebration of the 
Argentine Republic, he received fresh assurances 
of the vital need of preparedness in this country. 
In Buenos Aires he met among the distinguished 



158 The Life of Leonard Wood 

foreign visitors General von der Goltz of the 
German Army, who was destined to play such an 
important role in the World War. He talked at 
length with the German general, a devout disciple 
of universal military training and of the Prussian 
army system as a whole. 

Wood knew that the German military scheme 
with its iron discipline and its official caste was 
utterly unsuited to this country. He had always 
been a cliampion of the common soldier, and to 
treat enlisted men like cattle was especially re- 
pugnant to his deep-rooted sense of democracy. 

General Wood returned from South America 
more firmly convinced than ever that our military 
system ought to be revolutionized. He was more 
than ever dissatisfied with our system, which 
provided only for a small and entirely inadequate 
army of professional soldiers. He felt that it did 
not even possess the virtue of being democratic in 
principle. 

He was made Chief-of-Staff of the United 
States Army on July 6, 1910, and held office until 
April, 1914. The Boston physician, who had 
joined the army as contract surgeon, had now 
scaled his way to the peak of the mihtary structure. 
Having reached that point, he was in a much more 
favourable position to proceed with his prepared- 
ness plans. However, his position of prominence 



Chief-of-Staff of the U. S. Army 159 

had its disadvantages. As head of our military 
establishment, he was certain to draw sharp fire 
;from the apostles of pacifism and from eloquent 
men and women who really knew nothing about 
European political conditions and the war dangers 
of the Old World, but were masters of beautiful 
theories whereby they could prove to most any 
intelligent but uninformed audience that war on a 
great scale was an absurdity. In America Mr. 
Bryan was the high priest of this cult. 

Legions of publicists were shouting from the 
forums of the whole English-speaking world that 
war was a thing of the past, that with the present 
expense of maintaining huge armies and the dead- 
Hness of modern military engines, war meant 
national bankruptcy, national suicide, and there- 
fore could not take place. 

This was the peculiar situation which faced 
General Wood when he first began to advocate his 
scheme of universal military training. He was 
staking his whole record on the success of his 
campaign, knowing that if he failed he was due for 
a fall from which it would be difficult to recover. 
But he is not the man to be deterred from duty 
because of danger either physical or to his career. 

His universal service plan was based on the 
Swiss and Australian systems — short terms of 
draining for the youth of the land at a time when 



160 The Life of Leonard Wood 

they could best afford to give a few months to 
their country; intensive short officers' training 
courses for college men and others possessing the 
necessary educational qualifications; and more 
extensive maneuvers or military games than this 
country had as yet undertaken. In this pro- 
gramme Wood never contemplated a large stand- 
ing army. He opposed the essentials of the mili- 
tary programme of the Continental Powers which 
demanded great sacrifice of time from its male 
citizens while they were going through their train- 
ing. 

To arouse the country to a sense of its insecurity 
and to move it to action before it became too late, 
Wood was not afraid to violate some of the moss- 
grown traditions which encrusted our military 
establishment. We had a sort of an unwritten 
law which in effect provided that army officers, 
like small boys, should be seen but not heard. 
General Wood knew that his preparedness pro- 
gramme required an educational campaign of 
national scope. He became its chief spokesman 
and wrote and spoke untiringly year after year in 
an effort to arouse the nation. He was one of the 
few men in this country who clearly foresaw the 
danger of the approaching European war, and one 
of still fewer who had the courage to advocate 
sound preparedness measures. 



Chief-of-Staff of the U. S. Army 161 

In speeches and magazine articles he called 
attention to the many defects of our army system 
and the vital necessity for improving it. He began 
doing this when nine out of ten persons in this 
land knew practically nothing about what was 
happening in Europe and cared less. How could 
a European war touch the United States .^^ Sup- 
pose we were challenged? "A million Americans 
would spring to arms over night," to quote the fa- 
mous political orator of the Middle West. But 
when the time actually came, it was well for us 
that the allied armies were in a position to hold the 
Western front while our millions of volunteer and 
drafted soldiers were being drilled; and it was well 
that the Allies were able to transport and equip 
most of our army, which could not otherwise have 
taken its place in the trenches in France. 

Wood did not sound any brass gong of alarm. 
He went ahead slowly and surely, but steadily. 
He began his preparedness campaign while he was 
commander of the Philippine Division, by re- 
vamping and extending our system of defence in 
the islands, moving the military base from Subig 
Bay to Manila Bay, by subjecting our island forces 
to more intensive military training in general. 
While commander of the Eastern Department, 
he wrote extensively of our need for comprehensive 
field maneuvers, especially in view of the fact that 



162 The Life of Leonard Wood 

our forces were so small. He called attention to 
the fact that while our small army units were 
splendidly trained, there was not a single officer 
in the United States who had had any experience 
in handling a large force of men, say a complete 
division. In fact, never since the Civil War had 
our general officers been afforded the opportunity 
to deal with the problems of managing large army 
units consisting of the three brandies of the ser- 
vice, infantry, cavalry, and artillery. 

Coming from a man of deeds rather than one 
of words. Wood's pleas for preparedness carried 
all the more weight. Instead of painting lurid 
pictures of our devastated country over-run by 
invading armies, he supplied the nation with a 
physical demonstration of our defencelessness. 
This he did by organizing in August, 1909, the 
most extensive maneuvers the United States had 
yet staged. 

The military problem presupposed that, follow- 
ing the sudden rupture of diplomatic relations 
with a strong European power, our North Atlantic 
fleet had been defeated and scattered off the Maine 
coast, that the enemy had gained command of the 
North Atlantic and had landed an expeditionary 
force on the coast of Massachusetts with the object 
of capturing the -city of Boston. The mock 
campaign occupied a week, and was made as real- 



Chief-of-Staf of the U. S. Army 163 

istic as possible. The attack on Boston was by 
land and sea, army transports being used in place 
of warships. More than 14,000 National Guards- 
men took part in the hypothetical battle; and while 
the umpires officially declared the result to be a draw, 
they did not conceal their belief that the invading 
"Red" army had the best of the argument with the 
defending "Blues," and that Boston would have 
been taken had the battle been real. Wood's war 
game aiforded the whole country a striking proof 
of the vulnerability of our Atlantic coast cities. 

"But what of our elaborate coast defences on 
which we have spent so much money?" asked the 
skeptics, still doubtful that an invasion was pos- 
sible. 

"A coast defence is like a giant in armour," 
answered Wood. "He is only effective within 
the reach of his club." Wood had demonstrated 
that no matter how powerful coast defences might 
be, they were absolutely useless without a well- 
trained, mobile army operating behind them. 

Pleadmg the cause of preparedness. General 
Wood ventured into a new field. He was unac- 
customed to writing and speaking in public. He 
had no literary grace, no cultivated art of oratory, 
but he had something to say, which was more 
important. He developed a clear, plain, forceful 
style, .illuminated by homely, humorous phrases. 



164 The Life of Leonard Wood 

"Our troops are split up into companies of walk- 
cleaners, battalions of lawn-mowers, and regiments 
of patrolmen," he said at one time when he was 
trying to convince the country of the uselessness 
of the military posts in the interior where there was 
nothing to do but mow the grass and keep the 
walks clean. Wood demanded adequate military 
protection for the Panama Canal, the Philippine 
Islands, Hawaii, and our great coast cities. At- 
tacldng our wastefulness, he pointed out that the 
United States spent $100,000,000 per year on our 
few thousand troops, two thirds as much as 
France spent annually for her large army. Ancient 
posts, established in the interior of the West when 
the Indians were being pacified, w^ere kept up at 
huge expense because pork-hunting Senators and 
Congressmen wanted them, although their useful- 
ness had long since passed. Of course, he was 
opposed by the politicians in his advocacy of scrap- 
ping the interior posts and grouping our military 
forces on or near the borders and at the outposts, 
such as the Philippines and the Panama Canal. 

Future historians will find much valuable and 
interesting data in the articles written by General 
Wood on military subjects during this time. In 
a series of magazine articles he told of the remark- 
able achievements of our soldiers, which most of 
us had forgotten, if, indeed, we had ever known. 



Chief-of-Staff of the U. S. Armij 165 

The army had cleaned up the pest holes of Cuba 
and Porto Rico. Major Walter Reed, of the 
United States Army, had removed the peril of 
yellow fever; and another army doctor. Major 
Bailey K. Ashford, had discovered the cause of 
tropical anemia in Porto Rico. From the earliest 
days in our history, the army had preceded the 
pioneer settlers, pacifying hostile Indians through- 
out the Middle West, the Far West, and South- 
west, building trading posts, laying telegraph 
wires, maintaining order and the security of life 
and property. In late years, the army had per- 
formed similar service in Alaska, connecting by 
telegraph the remotest outposts of that territory 
with the wire system of the country, laying cables, 
equal in length to some trans-Atlantic lines, build- 
ing wireless stations in most inaccessible regions, 
constructing good roads which will last for decades, 
if not centuries, to come. 

As ChiefnDf-Staff in Washington, General Wood 
was more popular with the officers and men at 
the military posts throughout the country and the 
territorial dominions than with the bureaucrats 
in the Capital. He brought into the department 
an untiring energy and initiative which made the 
swivel-chair experts uneasy and uncomfortable. 
He challenged time-honoured traditions and de- 
stroyed quantities of red tape. For instance, al- 



166 The Life of Leonard Wood 

though originally the various bureaus in Washing- 
ton had been created to function for the benefit 
and service of the line, the bureau heads, sitting 
close to the men in power, had managed to twist 
this arrangement about in such a way that the 
line had become subservient to the bureaus. In 
other words, the servants in the Washington 
War Department dictated to the mihtary forces 
outside. 

This order was upset without much ceremony 
by General Wood who understood the causes for 
the inexcusable delays in the War Department 
which had hampered him as well as all our other 
active army officers in the field or at outlying 
mihtary posts. He decreed that henceforth the 
Washington bureaus must serve the line and serve 
it promptly. This meant that bureau chiefs 
would have to hustle and take short cuts to supply 
the needs of the army. 

This act was characteristic of Wood. He had 
always been the champion of the man in the field. 
If he had any favourites, it was the man on the job. 
He always had an unbounded faith in the en- 
listed man, and he believed fervently that if the 
American army was well officered and well sup- 
plied it would ine\atably give good account of it- 
self. Once an officer remarked to him that the 
personnel of a certain regiment was below grade. 



Chief-of-Staff of the U. S. Army 167 

and on the whole rather poor, to which Wood re- 
pHed : 

"A wise old general once said/there are no poor 
regiments, but there are plenty of poor colonels.' " 

He was a stickler for building up the morale 
of the enlisted men to the highest point and mak- 
ing each lowly private proud of his uniform and 
his profession. Wood never held too big a job 
to address privates, offer them advice or correct 
them. Once during the late war, when he was in 
command of one of the National Army Divisions, 
he was driving in his automobile toward camp. 
He noticed a private accompanied by a young 
woman coming along the road. As the machine 
approached the couple, the soldier stooped over 
apparently to tie his shoelaces. General Wood 
ordered the driver to halt. He called the soldier 
over to the machine. 

"Didn't you see us coming?" asked the General 
in a kindly manner. 

"Yes, sir," answered the private. 

"Then why didn't you salute?" 

The General was smiling, but the soldier could 
not find a ready answer even though he knew he 
was not exactly being called down. 

"Now I know how you felt," continued the 
General. "You were with this young woman, 
and you felt a bit embarrassed, so you thought 



168 The Life of Leonard Wood 

you'd avoid saluting by busying yourself with 
your shoelaces. That was a mistake. You should 
have said to the young lady: 'There comes the 
old man himself. Now watch me make him 
salute.' You know that it is your duty to salute 
me as your superior oflBcer, but it is just as much 
my duty to return your salute." 

A veteran Rough Rider, J. Pennington Gardner 
of Boston, tells the following incident from the 
Spanish-American War: 

"We left San Antonio, Texas, and in due course 
arrived at Tampa, Florida. A day or so after our 
arrival I was told that an aunt of mine from Boston 
was at the Tampa Bay Hotel and wanted to see 
me. I was astonished, as I had no idea that she 
was in that part of the world. I secured a pass 
and reached the hotel at about nine o'clock in the 
evening. 

"It appears that she had read manifold tales in 
the newspapers that 'the boys were without shoes 
and clothing, etc' She had a trunk full of clothing 
she had brought in the hope that she could fit me 
out. If this happened to any other outfit, it did 
not happen to ours, as Colonel Wood and Lieu- 
tenant-Colonel Roosevelt had seen to it that we 
lacked nothing in the way of equipment and we 
were extremely well provided for. 

"The first thing T was asked was if I cared to 



Chief-of-Staff of the U. S. Army 169 

eat anything. The idea of a meal at a table was 
quite appealing, and we adjourned to the dining 
room. My aunt, having already dined, merely 
sat at the table with me while I had dinner. We 
had been there only about ten minutes when in 
walked my commander — Colonel Wood, with 
Brigadier-General Young, who was in charge of the 
Cavalry Division. 

"In the large dining room there was only one 
table set and this my aunt and I occupied alone. 
Dinner had long since been served, and it was then 
perhaps 9:15 in the evening. The waiter showed 
the Colonel and General up to the table that we 
were sitting at. Colonel Wood said to the waiter: 
"Set that table over there," indicating another 
table some distance from ours, and then left me. 
Personally, I thought no more of the incident, as it 
was only etiquette and proper that my Colonel — 
especially in company with a Brigadier-General 
of the regular army — should not sit at the same 
table with me, being, as I was, a private in his 
command. 

"The next day out at the camp I was standing 
some distance from Colonel Wood, who appar- 
ently recognized me as the man whom he had seen 
the night before, and whom he had not sat down 
with to dinner. He came up to me and said, 
*I hope you did not mind my not sitting down 



170 The Life of Leonard Wood 

with you and that lady you were dining with last 
night, as General Young and I had some private 
matters that we had to discuss.' Most obviously 
they were planning some details in connection with 
the Cuban campaign. I was perfectly floored by 
the thoughtfulness of Colonel Wood in thus ad- 
dressing me. I could only salute and say 'Thank 
you, sir.' Evidently he had had in mind that he 
might have hurt my feelings in not sitting at the 
same table with me. i 

"This story I have quoted many times as in- 
dicating Wood's personality. Able as he is in 
administrative affairs, and strong as he is in han- 
dling any difficult situation — whether it be in his 
Apache campaign or in Cuba or in the Philippines 
— he is under the skin a man of the most consider- 
ate nature, and his human qualities as shown by 
this little incident clearly set forth that though a 
regular army officer with the stiff training of his 
calling, he is big in small matters and as human 
as a man can be. 

"Those who knew him personally, or have come 
in contact with him, as I did through this small 
incident, cannot have otherwise than the deepest 
regard for him personally." 

It was this spirit which has always made the 
oflBcers and men who worked under Wood swear 
by him. It was the spirit that won the coopera- 



Chief-of-Staff of the U. S. Army 171 

tion of his subordinates in Cuba, and dissolved the 
hostility which he at first encountered in the Philip- 
pines, creating loyalty in its stead. 

Any reader of this narrative, who has had any 
experience in business affairs of any sort, knows 
that one cannot step into an established business 
and propose and enforce important improvements 
in service without arousing bitter antagonism and 
hatred on the part of the old hands who always 
want to run things the way they were run in the 
past. It makes no difference how bad and ineffi- 
cient the old management may be, it has its loyal 
adherents who want to be left comfortably alone, 
muddling along as they have been accustomed to 
do. 

As Chief-of-Staff, Wood did not leave things 
alone. He made changes, going even so far as to 
dismiss one Brigadier-General. The result was 
that a determined effort was made to oust him from 
office. A bill was introduced to this effect by 
Representative James Hay of Virginia, chairman 
of the House Committee on Military Affairs, and 
an intimate friend of the dismissed Brigadier. 

General Wood was too much absorbed in his 
chosen work, that of preparing the country against 
the conflict which he saw coming, to pay much 
attention to the small number of men whose 
enmity he had aroused. His one aim was to labour 



172 The Life of Leonard Wood 

for the safety of the nation. How farseemg he 
was may be judged from the fact that shortly after 
he took oflBce as Chief-of-StafF he began to be- 
labour Congress for an appropriation of $5,000,000 
for the establishment of an aircraft department. 

"There is no limit to the possibilities of the 
airplanes," said General Wood. "I am heartily 
in favour of experimenting as much as possible 
in this new branch of science which has no hmit 
in view of the limitless field — ^the air. 

" It may be one year, it may be more, but sooner 
or later the airplane will be the greatest factor 
of the century in the world's affairs. For these 
reasons I shall use my influence to the utmost to 
obtain funds from Congress to enable the army 
to carry on experiments and trials. . . . 

"Just at present a dirigible can carry more men 
and more supplies, and is, perhaps, more depend- 
able than a flying machine, but this will not pre- 
clude my favouring the airplane for the army." 

These prophetic words were spoken in August, 
1910. In that happy, peaceful, far-off time, 
America and England were bestrewn with famous 
writers and orators who could prove in half an 
hour that another great war was the creation of a 
disordered military mind. Lord Roberts, one of 
England's greatest military men, was sacrificing 
his honourable reputation by constantly warning 



Chief-of-Staf of the U. S. Army 173 

his country against the impending war tragedy. 
England's leaders of public opinion were making 
kindly allowances for "Bobs," who was, no doubt, 
"seeing things" in his old age. England never 
paid much attention to the wise counsel of Lord 
Roberts, and the result was that Britain came to 
the verge of defeat at the hands of the Germans. 

Of course, Congress knew better than to waste 
the country's money and the energies of our young 
army officers in aircraft experiments. The air- 
plane was a thing to be proud of as an American 
invention. It was good enough to enliven a 
Roman holiday. To-day we can reflect that al- 
though General Wood, as Chief-of-Staff, demanded 
airplanes for our army nearly ten years ago, 
predicting its great future possibilities at a time 
when aviation was still in its early infancy, our 
government neglected aviation persistently, re- 
fused to help develop it, and permitted England, 
France, Germany, and Italy to outstrip us in this 
important branch of scientific endeavour. In 
1918, our army officers at the front were repeating 
the same demand that General Wood made in 
August, 1910, and our valiant aviators fought 
throughout the late war in flying machines made 
in France, England, and Italy and most of them 
old machines. 

With the change of administration in 1913, 



174 Tlie Life of Leonard Wood 

Wood was slated for early retirement as Chief-of- 
Staff. Newspaper reports at the time pointed 
out that no man, who had been so closely indenti- 
fied with three Republican presidents, could ex- 
pect to continue long in office as head of our army. 
However, he was reappointed by Lindley M. Gar- 
rison, Secretary of War, and remained Chief -of- 
Staff for more than a year. Secretary Garrison ex- 
plaining that he did not want to disturb the Wash- 
ington War Office until he had become better ac- 
quainted with it. Besides, he and Wood seemed 
at first to be well matched for effective team work. 
Garrison caught Wood's infectious enthusiasm for 
preparedness to the extent that he began to make 
public demands for a larger standing army. In 
the summer of 1913, they made an inspection trip 
of army posts which turned out to be something of 
a national preparedness speech-making tour. Both 
spoke plainly on the need of stronger military pro- 
tection, but suddenly the speech-making came 
to a halt. The explanation given was to the 
effect that Wood and Garrison had been silenced 
by a stern rebuke from President Wilson who 
deplored their activity. But the world was at 
peace in 1913. Two years later Garrison officially 
censured Wood for permitting Colonel Roosevelt 
to express his patriotic views on our military needs 
in the vicinity of the Plattsburgh camp, and the 



Chief-of-Staf of the U. S. Army 175 

United States had then been cruelly challenged 
by the world's greatest mihtary power, and 
Europe was in the throes of the most disastrous 
war in history. 

However, Wood continued his preparedness 
work with the cooperation of Secretary Garrison 
in 1913. With the latter 's permission he sent out 
letters to many presidents of colleges and univer- 
sities, proposing the establishment of summer 
military training camps for students. The re- 
sponses were friendly, but somewhat lacking in 
enthusiasm. Still, Wood managed to recruit 
enough students for two camps, one of which he 
located on the historic battlefield of Gettysburg 
and the other on the Presidio of Monterey, Cali- 
fornia. The former opened July 7, 1913, and 
closed August 15th, and the latter ran from July 1st 
to August 8th. One hundred and fifty -nine students 
reported for instruction at Gettysburg and sixty- 
three at Monterey. One year before the war only 
two hundred and twenty-two young men could 
be interested in national preparedness to the extent 
of training for it. At Wood's suggestion an advi- 
sory committee of college presidents was formed 
consisting of John Grier Hibbenof Princeton, Henry 
B. Hutchins of Michigan, Benjamin Ide Wheeler 
of California, Jacob Gould Schurman of Cornell, 
Henry Sturgis Drinker of Lehigh, and John H. 



176 The Life of Leonard Wood 

Finley, Commissioner of Education of New York 
State. 

Despite the small attendance, the college camps 
of 1913 were a great success. The two hundred 
and twenty-two students became so many mis- 
sionaries of Wood's ideas and they returned to 
their colleges and universities in the fall telling 
their friends of the interesting training they had 
received and the value they had derived from their 
vacation work. Wood's idea had taken root. 
In the summer of 1914, four camps had to be 
established to accommodate the students who 
volunteered for instruction. Camps were estab- 
lished in Vermont, North Carolina, Michigan, and 
California. The total attendance was six hundred 
and sixty -seven. 



IX 

The Awakener op the Nation 

LEONARD WOOD remained Chief-of-Staff 
under the Wilson administration until April 22, 
1914, when he was transferred to the command 
of the Department of the East. It was his old 
command which he had held before going to Wash- 
ington in 1910. 

His headquarters on Governor's Island, that 
little pancake of land in New York Harbour 
within a stone's throw of the Statue of Liberty, 
now became a busy centre of patriotic activity. 
From the office which General Wood now oc- 
cupied in the dingy, weather-beaten old building 
on the island, Hancock, Meade, McDowell, Miles, 
and other well-known officers had commanded the 
eastern military district. It was a place rich in 
patriotic tradition, and no more fitting spot could 
have been found from which to disseminate Wood's 
propaganda for the protection of the United 
States. 

Thus far he had encountered no opposition to his 

177 



178 The Life of Leonard Wood 

plans, either on the part of the War Department 
or the Administration. Yet it is safe to say that 
there was no man in high mihtary office in Europe 
or America who was waging a more aggressive 
campaign for mihtary readiness than Wood. At 
the same time, how^ever, there was no army officer 
of high rank either in this or any other country 
who was more unmihtaristic in thought or utter- 
ance. There is no saber-rattHng to be found in 
any of his numerous speeches or articles of this 
period immediately preceding the outbreak of the 
European war. He never voiced any creed of 
imperialism or spread-eagleism. The man who 
bad refused to import American teachers to Cuba 
for fear it might offend a friendly and dependent 
alien race expressed no desire to foist American 
culture or institutions on foreign lands. 

He was spurred on by a zeal for which not even 
his severest critic can impute any other motive 
than patriotism of the noblest order. The facts 
speak for themselves. All our mihtary traditions 
impose silence on army oflScers. They should be 
seen, not heard. They should obey orders and keep 
their mouths shut. Wood obeyed orders to the 
letter, and violated all the sacred traditions of 
silence. He was talking, preaching, writing, 
night and day, pleading for a larger army, bigger 
guns, airplanes, maneuvers on a large scale. In 



The Awakener of the Nation 179 

short, he was making a show of himself from the 
point of view of the mihtary man of orthodox 
traditions. He was making the same sort of show 
of himself as Lord Roberts — "Little Bobs" — of 
Britain. Unless there was actual danger ahead, 
Wood could achieve nothing by his preparedness 
fight except loss of prestige in the army. 

And then, with the suddenness of a thunderclap, 
the European war broke loose. 

From President Wilson came the edict to the 
country that we must remain "neutral even in 
thought." Wood's answer to this curious order 
was to establish the Plattsburgh camp on Lake 
Champlain. It was an officers' training school 
for business men, teachers, lawyers, preachers, 
public officials, men of all callings. Academic 
military men and unreasoning administration 
partisans may argue even to-day that Wood was 
insubordinate in spirit, if not in action; but there 
are certainly times when blind obedience to an 
erring commander-in-chief ceases to be the highest 
duty of a military officer. Wood's course was 
vindicated by the events of the war. It has won 
him the admiration and active support of men of 
national prominence of all political parties. In 
response to a letter sent by the Leonard Wood 
League last December to men of prominence 
throughout the country asking support for General 



180 The Life of Leonard Wood 

Wood as candidate for the Republican Presidential 
nomination, Frederick Coudert, the distinguished 
international lawyer of New York City, and a 
Democrat, wrote as follows: 

I have your letter of the 15th in regard to the nomina- 
tion of General Wood and would say in reply that I 
am most earnestly hopeful that General Wood may be 
nominated, not as you say, "to insure a Republican 
victory," but rather to secure a strong, fearless, capable 
Executive at a time of national and international diffi- 
culties of an extraordinary character. The independent 
voters of America who, when aroused, are in number 
sufficient to hold the balance of power, have become 
utterly weary of the politicians, who seek to use great 
problems affecting the vital interests of the nation as 
stepping-stones for personal or party advantage. Never 
have party ties been more lightly held, yet never has 
national feeling been more earnestly aroused than during 
the last two years. The nation now feels the need for a 
leader who will embody this sentiment in acts rather 
than in words. 

The country is profoundly chagrined at the failure 
of the present Administration to do aught but sub- 
stitute platitude for policy, promise for performance: 
a course which has led to the paralysis of government 
at a time when the nations of Europe look to America 
for guidance and cooperation in reconstructing a world 
shattered by war. 

The lamentable situation created in Mexico by such 
a lack of elementary foresight and firmness such as to 
render ultimate intervention seemingly inevitable, and 



The Awakener of the Nation 181 

the inability to deal effectively with domestic problems 
has created an exceptionally serious situation which 
must compel the choice of an exceptional man. 

At a time when a pusillanimous neutrality, ordered 
from Washington, benumbed the public mind. General 
Wood preached the gospel of preparedness at great risk 
to his own career, and inaugurated the training system 
which made it possible for the American army to have 
a corps of officers when war came. His life has been 
spent in creative public activity, away from political 
machination and phrase-making. I believe there is 
to-day no one else who will make such an appeal to our 
independent voters whose sole concern is that the na- 
tion be respected abroad and united at home, and that 
pending problems be met with firm grasp and fearless 
mind. 

When Wood established the first Plattsburgh 
camp in 1915, his campaign had gone beyond the 
college youth stage. Every able-bodied man of 
military age might now be called upon at any time 
to defend the rights of America in the gigantic 
contest across the seas. The first Plattsburgh camp 
was stern business. The men who attended it 
did so at sacrifice of time and money. They paid 
their own railroad fares, paid for their living in 
camp, their uniforms and all equipment, except^ 
arms. 

The Plattsburgh camp was more than a camp, 
more than a training school for officers. It was 
an idea which caught the imagination of every 



182 The Life of Leonard Wood 

red-blooded American. Ideas leap from one land's 
end to another and across international boundary 
lines. There were five training camps established 
in 1915 with a total attendance of more than 
3,000. In 1916 there were six camps and the at- 
tendance grew to more than 16,000. 

The alumni of the first college camps in 1913 had 
formed an organization which they had called the 
National Reserve Corps, whose coat of arms bore 
the inscription: "Ready, Organized, Prepared," 
and whose slogan was: "Striving for Peace, but 
Ready for War." The men who attended the 
first Plattsburgh camp formed a society just as 
the college men of the Gettysburg and Monterey 
camps had done, and in 1916 these two organiza- 
tions merged under the name of the Military 
Training Camps Association of the United States. 
Being true Americans, no members of this body 
had any fear that this democracy was in danger 
of becoming militaristic in spirit. They were 
merely translating into deeds old Cromwell's wise 
saying : " Trust in God, but keep your powder dry." 

Having fathered the training camps movement, 
General Wood became their leader and constant 
advisor. He inspected them, counselled the in- 
structors, and inspired the students by his patriotic 
utterances and his clear, practical lectures on mili- 
tary subjects. 



The Awakener of the Nation 183 

OfBcially he occupied a high army position, but 
unofficially he was far removed from the seat of 
power. His volunteer activities did not find 
favour in the eyes of the Administration. It must 
be recalled that President Wilson, who had com- 
manded the nation in 1914 to remain "neutral 
in thought," was about to appear for reelection 
under the slogan, "He kept us out of war." And 
yet, here was a Major-General of the United States 
Army going up and down the land preaching readi- 
ness for war and urging the flower of American 
manhood to enlist in the military training camps 
and prepare for the worst. 

What gave Wood peculiarly great strength with 
the masses of the American people, who from the 
beginning of the war were overwhelmingly pro- 
Ally, was that he sandwiched his speeches and 
articles on preparedness with two-fisted action of 
the sort that Americans like. His words were 
propped up by deeds. The Boston maneuvers, 
the student camps, Plattsburgh, were deeds. They 
stood forth like hard and clear mountain peaks 
above the beautiful, smooth billows of oratory 
which flowed from the White House. 

And Wood talked facts, hard, uncompromising 
facts, which nobody could dispute or argue against. 
He was indefatigable, working just as he had 
worked in Cuba, night and day. Most of us had 



184 Tlie Life of Leonard Wood 

studied American history rather uncritically at 
school, especially the military part thereof. Wood 
found time to rewrite whole chapters of our mili- 
tary history, turning the spotlight on some ex- 
tremely disagreeable facts. He showed that we 
had never been adequately prepared for any war 
in which we had ever engaged, and pointed to the 
heavy sacrifice in blood and treasure which we had 
sustained through unpreparedness and defective 
military organization from the Revolutionary War 
down to the Spanish-American War. In his book 
entitled "Our Military History, Its Facts and 
Fallacies," he gave documentary proofs that some 
of our campaigns in the Revolutionary War, the 
War of 1812-14, and the Civil War were not all 
glorious for American arms. They were, in fact, 
disastrous. 

His statistics showed that in our wars we had 
always had superiority of troops, in some cases 
overwhelmir ^. We had enrolled 400,000 soldiers 
in the Rev utionary War and yet Washington 
at no time had an effective force of more than 
20,000 men in line, the large numbers of militia 
called from time to time being practically useless. 
He quoted Washington who said: "To place any 
dependence upon militia is assuredly resting upon 
a broken staff." In this volume Wood quoted at 
length Washington's appeahng letters, describing 



The Awakener of tlie Nation 185 

the disheartening trials of the war, due to the 
miUtia system, short enhstments, and lack of 
organization. Wood wrote: 

Briefly, these are the lessons of the (Revolutionary) 
war. That a confederation of states, without a strong 
central government under the direction of citizens 
'without experience in military matters and under con- 
ditions which permit each state to raise, arm, and equip 
troops, is an exceedingly weak form of government for 
the prosecution of war; that the war resources of a na- 
tion can only be employed to the greatest advantage 
when used as a national force under national control and 
'direction; that undisciplined and raw levies cannot meet 
disciplined troops with any hope of success ; that voluntary 
enlistments based on patriotism and the bounty cannot 
be relied upon to supply men for the army during a 
prolonged war, but that men should be enlisted for the 
period of the war; and, finally, that we should turn to 
the policy of general military training with a fixed 
period of obligation for all able-bodied men. 

So much for the miUtia system. Of the War of 
1812-14 Wood wrote: 

We had apparently learned very little from the les- 
sons of the Revolution. The war, taken as a whole, 
was a series of disasters and reverses on land, many of 
them highly discreditable in character. Our record on 
the sea was much better, and we gained many notable 
successes. The men of the fleet and on the individual 
ships of war were better trained and better disciplined 
than those of the land forces. 



186 The Life of Leonard Wood 

He emphasized that during our Indian war, 
following the second war with Britain, this nation 
with a population of seventeen million people had 
spent seven years struggling with twelve hundred 
Indian warriors, finally closing the fight without 
accomplishing its object, that of forcing the 
emigration of the Reds. Passing over the INIexi- 
can war, which was on the whole our best-con- 
ducted war, we come to the Civil War. Here 
Wood again pointed out the failure of the militia 
feature and of the volunteer system for both the 
North and the South. Both had to resort to the 
draft, then continuing: "The Confederacy really 
conducted the war as a nation; the Union as a 
confederacy. By so doing, the Confederacy added 
at least fifty per cent, to its efficiency. New 
regiments were not created to the extent that they 
were in the North. Volunteering, as could have 
been expected, and doubtless was expected by all 
who had any knowledge of our military history, 
diniinished after the first excitement was over, and 
the draft was in general application, both in the 
North and the South." 

In preparation for the coming struggle, Wood 
was striking heavy blows at the volunteer and 
militia systems, and wisely preparing the nation 
by the soundest educational methods for universal 
service. When we finally entered the war and 



Tlie Awakener of the Nation 187 

determined to fight it as a nation, making use of 
conscription, the country overwhelmingly ap- 
proved this means of distributing the sacrifice. 
And no man in this great country had done so 
much to prepare the way for universal service as 
Major-General Leonard Wood. For this service 
alone he deserves the undying gratitude of the 
people of the United States, 

In those tense days before we declared war on 
Germany, it was naturally impossible for any man 
to stir around the way that Leonard Wood did 
without arousing bitter opposition and active 
enmity of thousands of people. That might have 
been expected from the first by any one who knows 
the peculiarities of human nature. That the head 
of the War Department in Washington and other 
high officials of the Government would be moved to 
anger by the volunteer work of the man whose sole 
object was to prepare the country against danger 
at the time the world was passing through the 
greatest war tragedy in history, seems almost un- 
believable, especially in view of the fact that 
victory for the Central Powers of Europe would 
menace all our democratic institutions and lead to 
greater armed conflicts. Yet, everybody knows 
to-day that from Washington emanated the chief 
opposition against which Wood had to contend. 

Early in 1915 Wood, then in command of the 



188 The Life of Leonard Wood 

Department of the East, was asked for trifling 
assistance by the newly organized American 
Legion (not the organization of the same name 
formed after the war by the World War veterans) , 
a patriotic society which proposed to list and 
classify all Americans of mihtary age who had had 
some military training. OflScers of the Legion 
asked Wood to lend them the services of one of his 
aides to explain to them the War Department's 
standard method of grouping and classifying re- 
serves. The society proposed to present the whole 
list, containing some 250,000 names, to the War 
Department without cost. 

Wood was most favourably impressed by the 
constructive and practical programme of the 
Legion. He knew that Roosevelt had given it his 
endorsement, and was much interested in its work. 
;He could do no less than assign his aide to the brief 
I task of showing the Legion's officers how to go 
about their classification labour so as to conform 
most closely to the records of the War Depart- 
ment. He reported on the whole matter to 
Secretary of War Garrison. 

In reply Wood received a letter from Garrison, 
dated March 11, 1915, virtually rebuking him for 
having anything to do with the American Legion, 
and ordering him to shun it in the future. While 
recognizing that it might be desirable for the War 



The Awakener of the Nation 189 

Department to possess such a list as the Legion 
proposed to draw up, Secretary Garrison held that 
it was "undesirable" for officers of the army to 
have any connection with organizations outside 
the War Department, dealing or contemplating 
dealing with the same matter. 

But the real storm against Wood did not break 
until after Colonel Roosevelt deHvered his famous 
talk at Plattsburg on August 25, 1915. He 
did not mention the Administration at all nor 
any government officials. He delivered himself of 
a few caustic sentences about the hyphenates, and 
paid his compliments to the "pacifists and pol- 
troons" who refused to fight for their rights and 
apparently desired to "Chinafy" the country. 
While criticizing the German-Americans of di- 
vided allegiance he emphasized, as he often did, 
that the bulk of Americans of German descent were 
one hundred per cent, loyal, saying that one could 
fill every high government office from the presi- 
dent down with men of purely German blood who 
had proved to be nothing but Americans. 

The Colonel had prepared an address, but it was 
not until late in the afternoon that he spoke and 
the light was too dim for him to read his speech as 
he had intended. His remarks, therefore, were 
largely extemporaneous . About five thousand per- 
sons heard the address, student officers and civilians. 



190 TJie Life of Leonard Wood 

The mischief of his Plattsburg visit was caused 
by a dictated statement which the Colonel gave 
to the newspaper men at the Plattsburg railroad 
station, waj^ outside the camp, while he was wait- 
ing for his train to New York. 

"I wish to make one comment on the statement 
so frequently made that we must stand by the 
President," said Colonel Roosevelt. "I heartily 
subscribe to this on condition, and only on con- 
dition, that it is followed by the statement 'so 
long as the President stands by the country.' 

"Presidents differ just like other folks. No man 
could effectively stand by President Lincoln 
unless he had stood against President Buchanan. 
If after the firing on Fort Sumter President 
Lincoln had in a public speech announced that the 
believers in the Union were too proud to fight; 
and if, instead of action, there had been three 
months of admirable elocutionary correspondence 
with Jefferson Davis, by midsummer the friends 
of the Union would have followed Horace Greeley's 
advice to let the erring sisters go in peace, for 
peace at any rate was put above righteousness by 
some mistaken soul, just as it is at the present 
day." 

The next day Secretary of War Lindley M. 
Garrison sent the following telegram to General 
Wood, informing newspaper men in Washington 



The Awakener of the Nation 191 

that he had done so without consulting President 
Wilson : 



I have just seen the reports in the newspapers of the 
speech made by Ex-President Roosevelt at the Platts- 
burgh camp. It is difloicult to conceive of anything 
which would have a more detrimental effect upon the 
real value of this experiment than such an incident. 

This camp, held under government auspices, was 
successfully demonstrating many things of great mo- 
ment. Its virtue consisted in the fact that it conveyed 
its own impressive lesson in its practical and successful 
operations and results. 

No opportunity should have been furnished to any 
one to present to the men any matter excepting that 
which was essential to the necessary training they were 
to receive. Anything else could only have the effect 
of distracting attention from the real nature of the 
experiment, directing consideration to issues which 
excite controversy, antagonism, and ill-feeling, and 
thereby impairing, if not destroying, what otherwise 
would have been so effective. 

There must not be any opportunity given at 
Plattsburgh or any other similar camp for any such 
unfortunate consequences. 

In reply to this stinging rebuke, General Wood 
sent Secretary Garrison this message: 

Your telegram received, and the policy laid down 
will be rigidly adhered to. 



192 The Life of Leonard Wood 

Aside from the fact that Secretary Garrison 
apparently made no effort to investigate fully the 
circumstances of Colonel Roosevelt's criticism, 
and reprimanded General Wood, the ranking 
officer in point of service in the United States 
Army, for statements made by another man out- 
side the Plattsburgh camp, it might be recalled that 
not so very long before this incident, both he, him- 
self, as well as Wood had been criticized by the 
President for making preparedness speeches, ac- 
cording to popular reports. 

The Garrison rebuke caused a nation-wide up- 
roar. Almost every newspaper of note defended 
Wood and scored Garrison. Wood, of course, said 
nothing. 

How the camp at Plattsburgh felt about the whole 
matter is best shown by the fact that the rookies 
consisting of business men, college students, men 
of all political beliefs, united in the protests against 
Secretary Garrison's reprimand. The day after 
Garrison's letter was published, General Wood 
reviewed the student officers. The men marched 
in perfect order. Then suddenly someone started 
to applaud the General; it was enough to break 
military discipline for a few moments. The 
rookies gave vent to their pent-up feelings in a 
vigorous applause for Wood. 

A few simple facts from the history of our 



The Awakener of the Nation 193 

participation in the European war tell more 
effectively than anything else could what General 
Wood did to get the country ready. Our armies 
suffered from shortage of airplanes, artillery, and 
tanks, but so far as the human material was con- 
cerned, there was nothing the matter with our 
preparation or output. 

In his report of November 21, 1918, a few days 
after the Armistice was signed, General Pershing 
stated that the first American force using Ameri- 
can airplanes went into action in August, 1918, 
sixteen months after war was declared by the 
United States. We were in the war a little more 
than nineteen months, during which time not a 
single American battery employed an American 
field gun and only one hundred and nine American 
field guns had arrived in Europe at all. In the 
summer of 1918, Floyd Gibbons, the war cor- 
respondent who had just returned from France, 
lecturing in Carnegie Hall, New York City, told 
his audience: 

"I experienced a great thrill to-day. Passing 
by the Public Library I beheld on its steps the 
first American tank that I have ever seen." 

This remark was made all the more bitter as the 
speaker had lost an eye and had been otherwise 
seriously wounded while going over the top with 
American soldiers fighting machine guns. Dur- 



194 The Life of Leonard Wood 

ing the last part of the war our army was the only 
one in Europe to fight machine guns with flesh and 
blood. The French and the British either used 
tanks or else smothered machine-gun nests with 
artillery fire. Our artillerymen were equipped 
with French field guns of ancient model. We 
borrowed our tanks from our Allies. 

But we had trained nearly 4,000,000 soldiers 
before the Armistice was signed and more than half 
of that number had gone to France. More than 
200,000 officers had been trained. 

What astonished the British, French, and Italian 
ofiicers more than anything else was not our ability 
to raise such a large army, but the miraculous 
facility with which we trained such a large number 
of officers in such a short period. 

It was the result of Wood's work. These 
200,000 officers were not trained in the camps that 
he established before we entered the war, but when 
we did declare war, the United States possessed 
the mould and model of officers' training camps. 
The Plattsburgh idea was responsible for the seem- 
ingly miraculous results attained by the United 
States in officering our troops. As a matter of 
fact, training 200,000 officers in nineteen months 
was no miracle at all. Wood had been preparing 
for the job since 1913, the year before the European 
war began, when as Chief -of -Staff he established 



Tlie Awakener of the Nation 195 

the first student camps at Gettysburg, Pennsyl- 
vania, and Monterey, California. 

Now we come to the astonishing series of 
humiliations which the Administration heaped on 
General Wood, seemingly as punishment for 
his activities in insuring American victory. 
Shortly before the United States declared war 
and at a time when everybody knew it was 
inevitable, David Starr Jordan, one of the country's 
chief apostles of pacifism, wrote a letter to 
Secretary of War Newton D. Baker, who had 
succeeded Garrison, complaining against General 
Wood's speeches. 

Immediately after war was declared, Wood 
wrote and personally delivered two letters, one to 
the Adjutant-General of the Army and the other 
to the Chief-of-Staff, asking for service abroad. 
He was then fifty-six years old, sound in mind 
and body, and in service the ranking general offi- 
cer of the army. 

He never received any reply, not even an ac- 
knowledgment. What he did receive was notice 
that the Department of the East which he com- 
manded had been divided into three small 
departments — although several governors of the 
Atlantic states had vigorously opposed such a 
plan. With this notice came an order relieving 
Wood of his command and offering him the choice 



196 The Life of Leonard Wood 

of three military positions, the Philippines, Hawaii, 
or the "less important post" at Charleston, South 
Carolina, headquarters of the newly created South- 
eastern Department. Wood chose the "less im- 
portant post." 

Apparently the War Department paid greater 
heed to Dr. Jordan's letter protesting against pre- 
paredness when war was at hand, than to General 
Wood's letter asking for assignment at the 
front. 

Although the whole country knew that Wood 
had won the disfavour of the Administration 
nevertheless his demotion came as a great shock 
to most people. Again the press took up the cud- 
gel in Wood's defence just as it had done following 
the Plattsburgh incident. The Department of 
the East is known as one of the most import- 
ant military commands in the country, and 
friends of the Administration, as well as its foes, 
felt that a great mistake was being made not only 
in removing General Wood from a big command to 
a comparatively insignificant one, but in the very 
act of humiliating an officer who had been so 
conspicuously active in doing everything he 
could to make the country more ready for the 
struggle. 

Wood assumed command at Charleston in the 
early part of May,. 1917. During the next few 



The Awakener of the Nation 197 

months he managed to find plenty to do selecting 
and planning eleven large camps for the National 
Army and three officers' training camps, one at 
Oglethorpe, Georgia, one at Atlanta, and one at 
Little Rock, Arkansas. 

Reprimands and the shifting of Wood to less 
important fields of activity did not seem to be 
having much effect. In favour or out of favour. 
Wood was following his old habit of keeping busy 
and doing a lot of useful work. Whether or not 
this was recognized by the Administration, the fact 
remains that Wood was transferred again in 
August, 1917, still farther away from the scenes of 
most active war preparations. This time he was 
shifted to Camp Funston, Kansas, to train and 
command the 89th Division of the National 
Army. 

This kicking of General Wood from pillar to 
post was utterly futile. It harmed only the Ad- 
ministration, while enhancing Wood's popularity. 
Through his unselfish devotion to the country's 
cause Wood had become a central figure in the 
war. Apparently the Administration was deter- 
mined to move him from the centre of the stage, 
but Wood had the peculiar habit of taking the 
centre of the stage with him. When he was 
shipped from South Carolina to Kansas, South 
Carolina regretted the move and Kansas rejoiced. 



198 The Life of Leonard Wood 

Was the transfer intended as a demotion? If 
it was, Kansas had a ready answer. Kansas 
made Wood a Citizen Extraordinary through 
the following proclamation of Governor Arthur 
Capper: 

STATE OF KANSAS 
Governor's Office 

KNOW ALL MEN BY THESE PRESENTS: 

INASMUCH as the life of a state, its strength and 
virtue and moral worth are directly dependent upon 
the character of the citizens who compose it and 

INASMUCH as it is a solemn obligation imposed 
upon the Governor of the state to promote and advance 
the interests and well-being of the commonwealth in 
every way consistent with due regard for the rights and 
privileges of sister states, and 

WHEREAS, the soldier, Leonard Wood, Major- 
General in the United States Army and now command- 
ant at Camp Funston, has shown by his daily life, by 
his devotion to duty, by his high ideals and by his love 
of country, that he is a high-minded man after our own 
hearts, four-square to all the world, one good to know, 

NOW, THEREFORE, I, Arthur Capper, Governor 
of the State of Kansas, do hereby declare the said 
MAJOR-GENERAL LEONARD WOOD 
to be, in character and in ideals, a true Kansan. And 
by virtue of the esteem and affection the people of 
Kansas bear him, I do furthermore declare him to be 
to all intents and purposes a citizen of this state, and 



The AwaJcener of the Nation 199 

as such to be entitled to speak the Kansas language, to 
follow Kansas customs and to be known as 
CITIZEN EXTRAORDINARY 
IN WITNESS WHEREOF I have here- 
rq T unto subscribed my name and caused to 
be affixed the Great Seal of the State of 
Kansas. Done at Topeka, the capitol, this 
19th day of December, A. D. 1917. 

Arthur Capper. 

Governor. 

Late in November, after he had his training 
work well advanced, Wood was ordered to France, 
as were most of the other officers in command of 
National Army cantonments, to observe the mih- 
tary operations at the front. He landed in Liver- 
pool on Christmas Day, and while in England 
conferred with General Robertson, British Chief- 
of-Staff, and General French. 

On January 27th, while watching artillery practice 
at Fere-en-Tardenois a mortar shell burst inside 
the gun exploding the piece. The whole crew was 
blown to pieces. Four officers standing near 
General Wood were instantly killed. Colonel 
Charles E. Kilborne, Wood's Chief -of -Staff, was 
badly wounded in the face and Major Kenyon A. 
Joyce, another aide, received a wound in the arm. 
The General liimself received a severe wound in 
his left arm. He was the only man standing near 
the gun who was not killed. General Wood was 



200 The Life of Leonard Wood 

removed to a Field First Aid Hospital for an emer- 
gency dressing. The next day he motored about 
one hundred miles to Paris where he entered the 
French Officers' Hospital in the Hotel Ritz. 
Thanks to the excellent surgical attention he re- 
ceived and his own splendid i)hysical condition, 
he recovered rapidly. While mending, he was 
consulted by Clemenceau, Poincare, and JofFre. 
About the middle of February he left for the 
United States. 

No sooner had he reached Washington than 
seemingly inspired news stories began to appear 
in the press reflecting doubt that he would be ? . xit 
back to France for active duty. It was announced 
that he would have to pass a physical examination. 
A few days later Wood was examined by a Medical 
Board consisting of Major W. J. Mayo of Roches- 
ter, Minnesota, Colonel W. T. Longcope of New 
York City, and Colonel Frank Billings of Chicago, 
all medical scientists of international reputation. 
The board pronounced Wood sound and physically 
fit to command at the front. 

Like all the general officers who had been sent 
abroad for inspection. General Wood was sum- 
moned before the Senate Military Affairs Com- 
mittee and questioned as to the conditions at the 
front and the need of men. He told the Com- 
mittee that America must prepare to raise an army 



The Awakener of tJie Nation 201 

of 5,000,000 men. One newspaper commented 
later that it was not until Wood had given his 
estimate of the miUtary requirements that Pres- 
ident Wilson began to talk about an army of 
5,000,000. "No other American general return- 
ing from France had said anything about 5,000,000 
men," as one Eastern newspaper put it, "only 
Wood. The fault of Wood is his size." 

After app)earing before the Military Affairs 
Committee, Wood left for Camp Funston to 
resume his work of training the 89th Division 
which was completed the latter part of May. The 
89th was then ordered abroad for service. Ac- 
companying his division to New York, General 
Wood had no intimation that he would not be 
sent overseas, but on arriving at Camp Mills, 
Long Island, on May 25th, he found an order from 
the War Department relieving him of his com- 
mand and instructing him to go to San Francisco 
to take charge of the Western Department. Two 
days later, General Wood went to Washington 
where he asked President Wilson and Secretary of 
War Baker to rescind the order and give him per- 
mission to go abroad. He was told that the 
President would take the matter into considera- 
tion. That was the last he heard from the 
President. Wood returned to New York City 
to bid farewell to his division. Reviewing the 



202 The Life of Leonard Wood 

troops for the last time, he addressed his men as 
follows : 

"I will not say good-bye," and those who heard 
him said his voice trembled with emotion. "But 
consider it a temporary separation — at least I 
hope so. I worked hard with you and you have 
done excellent work. I had hoped very much to 
take you over to the other side. In fact, I had no 
intimation, direct or indirect, of any change of 
orders until we reached here the other night. 

"The orders have been changed and I'm to go 
back to Funston. I leave for there to-morrow 
morning. I WTish you the best of luck, and I ask 
you to keep the high standard of conduct you have 
had in the past. There isn't anything to be said. 
The order stands, and the only thing to do is to do 
the best we can — all of us — to win the war. That's 
what we're here for, that's what we've been trained 
for. I shall follow your career with the deepest 
interest, with just as much interest as though I 
were with you. Good luck and God bless you.'* 

Before leaving he shook hands with every man 
in the entire division. 

So far as we know. General Wood has never 
made any other comment on the order which de- 
prived him of the command of his division. No 
one has ever heard him speak one word of criticism 
against his shabby treatment. There was no need 



The Awdkener of tlie Nation 203 

of it. Everybody else spoke for him. Even the 
strongest Democratic papers in the country de- 
nounced as mean-spirited and utterly un-American 
this attempt to humiliate a man with such a long 
and honourable military and civil record. The 
storm of indignation proved too strong. The 
Administration compromised. The order assign- 
ing Wood to San Francisco was revoked and 
he was sent back to Camp Funston instead, to 
train a new division, the 10th, which was ready to 
go abroad on November 11th, when the Armistice 
was signed. 

The Washington correspondents tried to pry 
from the Administration some intelligent explana- 
tion for keeping Wood at home. But their effort 
was in vain. 

In spite of the crowding events of great impor- 
tance during the last few months of the war, the 
Administration found it hard to live down the 
Wood episode. " Wood has been like a sore thumb 
to Wilson," remarked Colonel Roosevelt. When 
members of Congress, newspapermen, and others, 
who were not afraid to offend the powers in Wash- 
ington, even in time of war, returned from over- 
seas with stories about the shortage of American 
artillery, airplanes, and tanks, the Administration 
would be reminded sharply of its treatment of 
General Wood. This man whom Washington 



204 The Life of Leonard Wood 

sought to bury in Hawaii, or the Phihppines, as 
far from the war as possible, had done more than 
any other man in the country to get us ready. 

Ex-President Taft in an article under the head- 
line "The Shelving of Wood," in the Philadelphia 
Ledger of June 1, 1918, wrote: 

The country is seriously disappointed that General 
Wood has not been permitted to go abroad with the 
division which he has been training. The New York 
World (strong Administration supporter) refers to the 
change of orders in his case as likely to leave a bad taste ■ 
in the mouths of the friends of the Administration. 
Those who are not thick and thin followers of the Presi- 
dent are even more disappointed. The previous treat- 
ment of General Wood creates doubt of the explanation 
that his shelving is due to General Pershing's request. 
The suspicion that it is but a continuation of the dis- 
ciplining of General Wood, this time for his recent frank 
attacks before the Senate Military Affairs Committee, 
will find strong lodgement in the minds of the people. 

One may recall Lincoln's long patience with Mc- 
Clellan's rude remarks and insulting conduct toward 
him, and Lincoln's remark that he would hold Mc- 
Clellan's horse for him if McClellan would only render 
the service the country needed. With a like spirit, 
Lincoln called Stanton to the war office in spite of Stan- 
ton's previous bitter criticism of him and his adminis- 
tration. 

The popular disgust aroused by what now ap- 
peared to be a set programme of hounding General 



The Awakener of the Nation 205 

Wood aroused Congress, and on June 11, 1918, 
Secretary of War Baker was called before the 
Military Affairs Committee and questioned why 
Wood had been kept at home. One of the Sena- 
tors gave this report of the meeting: 

" Mr. Baker told us that he did not know what 
was in the mind of the Commander-in-Chief as to 
Wood. Which translated, I suppose, means that 
the President has not told Mr. Baker what he pro- 
poses to do with General Wood." 

According to newspaper reports, Senator Hitch- 
cock questioned Baker as to the cause for rehev- 
ing Wood of his command. "Mr. Baker at once 
assumed his best defensive methods, and all cross- 
questioning failed of its purpose." On the same 
day that Baker was being grilled, Roosevelt said 
in a speech in St. Louis: 

"If this country had followed the advice Gen- 
eral Wood gave us three years ago, if we had 
utilized the knowledge he had and profited by his 
vision when we entered this war, we would have 
had 2,000,000 trained men and the arms to equip 
them. Russia would never have broken down 
and peace would have come within ninety days." 

On the next day Senator Johnson of California, 
now one of Wood's rivals for the Republican pres- 
idential nomination, asked the Administration to 
explain Wood's recall, and read before the Senate 



206 The Life of Leonard Wood 

many editorials from papers of all political opin- 
ions demanding such an explanation. Among the 
other members of Congress who volunteered as 
Wood champions at this time was Representative 
Richard Olney, a Democrat, of Massachusetts 
and a member of the House Committee on Military 
Affairs. Mr. Olney, who had formerly urged the 
promotion of Major-General Wood to the rank of 
General, now addressed an appeal to Secretary 
Baker, but nothing was done. 



X 

The Champion of Law and Order 

AFTER the Armistice, Major-General Wood 
was transferred to the Central Department with 
headquarters m Chicago where his duties consisted 
chiefly of superintending demobilization. It was 
an eminently respectable assignment demanding 
the services of a man of tried administrative 
ability. Next to the Eastern Department it was 
perhaps the most important post in the country. 
But nothing of any consequence was due to happen 
there. 

It was deadly dull, routine, swivel-chair work 
which Wood encountered in Chicago. Fortunately, 
he had not gotten out of his old habit of picking 
up odd jobs. 

One evening during the winter of 1918-19, Gen- 
eral Wood was walking to his hotel from the army 
headquarters in East Ohio Street when he en- 
countered two young men in uniform. Both 
boys were intoxicated. Each had lost an arm. 
General Wood stopped them and began to ques- 

207 



208 Tlie Life of Leonard Wood 

tion them. They had been discharged, they told 
the General, and had stopped off in Chicago on 
their way to their homes in the West. A well- 
meaning civilian had offered them a drink. There 
had been a soldiers' celebration in the course of 
which they had lost all their money and their 
railroad tickets. General Wood sent the boys to 
a hotel and paid for their supper and lodgings 
over night. 

It was an act of kindness such as any American 
soldier or civilian might have performed. But 
Wood did not stop with providing food and shelter 
for the boys for one night. He recognized the 
misfortune of the soldiers whom he had befriended 
merely as a sample of thousands of similar cases. 

The war heroes were returning, most of them 
mere boys who a few years ago had been wearing 
knickerbockers and had never been away from 
their homes until they were called to fight for their 
country. In the army they had been protected 
by military discipline. Discharged, they were 
adrift, boys once more, subject to great tempta- 
tions, especially during the first few days after 
their return when they were lionized by their fellow 
citizens. 

The day after he met the two wounded veterans. 
Wood started his reconstruction work in behalf of 
returned soldiers in Chicago. He turned his great 



The Champion of Law and Order 209 

organizing ability to the task of forming a central 
bureau for aiding the discharged soldiers. The 
work had already begun, but in a rather slip-shod 
way. Chicago as well as other cities had several 
such bureaus, but they lacked organization. They 
were scattered units without any centralized team 
work. The Chicago bureau as organized by Wood 
became the model for the Federal Bureau for find- 
ing employment for returning soldiers. Under the 
guidance of Major-General Leonard Wood, the man 
who had unwillingly stayed at home, the Chicago 
Federal Bureau won the reputation of being the 
most efficiently run office of its kind in the country. 
General Wood's plan for assisting the veterans 
included a central registration office, an efficiently 
run employment bureau, sleeping quarters for 
men without funds, and an information bureau 
to guide soldiers to places where they might secure 
wholesome food and clean beds at reasonable 
prices. He secured the cooperation of Chicago's 
leading business men and representatives of the 
various societies which had turned their energies 
to war work, including the Salvation Army, the 
Red Cross, the Y. M. C. A., the Y. W. C. A., the 
Knights of Columbus, the Chicago Vocational 
Training Board, the Jewish Welfare Board, the 
Farm Labour Administration, the Women's Trade 
Union League, the Lodging Bureau of Chicago, 



210 The Life of Leonard Wood 

and scores of church organizations and other so- 
cieties. 

In the summer of 1919 there occurred in the se- 
cond largest city in the United States a race riot 
which in brutahty and mob violence surpassed any 
outburst of lawlessness this country has ever known. 
By the time the local police and state authorities 
had crushed the mob spirit and restored order,' 
thirty-five Negroes and twenty white persons were 
reported to have been slain, while scores of men 
and women had met with serious physical injury. 

It was indeed an ugly blot on American history, 
as humiliating to the nation as it was to the city in 
which it occurred. But fundamentally the riot in 
Chicago was no more criminal nor disturbing than 
other demonstrations against law and order which 
have taken place within the past year, but which 
have been more promptly quelled, and conse- 
quently have not resulted in such heavy blood- 
shed. 

The country had hardly recovered from the first 
sharp shock of the Chicago riots when a similar 
outburst occurred in Omaha, Nebraska. The cir- 
cumstances which led to the Omaha riot differed 
only in details from the Chicago incident. Both 
were spontaneous outbreaks of mob passion di- 
rected against the coloured people. 

The mob in Omaha stormed the county jail. 



The Champion of Law and Order 211 

lynched a Negro accused of having assaulted a 
young white woman, almost succeeded in lynch- 
ing Edward P. Smith, the heroic Mayor of the 
city, who attempted most courageously to save the 
coloured prisoner from illegal execution, and 
burned the courthouse and county jail. 

Governor Samuel R. McKelvie of Nebraska 
immediately called for Federal troops. When he 
received word of the riot, General Wood, in whose 
district (the Central Department) the crime oc- 
curred, was on an inspection tour in South Dakota, 
far from the scene of disorder. He at once sent 
his terse orders over the wire, and within a few 
minutes after Governor McKelvie had appealed 
for help, trained veterans were rushing to Omaha. 
Wood commandeered a railroad engine and a ca- 
boose, and rode a night's journey to connect with a 
train which took him to Omaha. He was in the city 
the day following the lynchiag, and sixteen hun- 
dred picked soldiers were patrolhng the streets. 
In less than twenty-four hours law and order were 
restored and one hundred and fifty of the rioters 
were in jail. Three days later Wood left Omaha, 
a quiet and orderly community. 

The main difference between the Chicago and 
Omaha riots lay in this: that in the Nebraska city 
the mob which had declared itself an outlaw of 
civilization was pacified within twenty-four hours, 



212 The Life of Leonard Wood 

by a handful of troops directed by a strong leader 
who never allowed himself to become excited. Not 
a shot was fired in stamping out the condition of 
anarchy which temporarily prevailed. Had the 
state of Illinois availed itself of the same leader- 
ship, it is virtually certain that not a single person, 
black or white, would have met death or injury 
after the first mad demonstration on the bathing 
beach of Lake Michigan. 

Though inspired solely by race prejudice, the 
Omaha riots developed certain disquieting phases 
which did not escape Wood's observation. There 
was no industrial battle being waged, but disorder 
having broken loose, radicals of the city sought to 
foment a continuation and extension of the trouble. 
Wood discovered that the Reds were on the spot 
supplying liquor and appeahng to the worst ele- 
ment with inflammatory speeches. The Reds were 
ready to convert a race riot into a political riot. 

If it had been the Administration's plan to keep 
Wood in the background where the people of the 
country would forget him, that plan was cracking. 
From coast to coast he had been applauded for his 
constructive and effective means of aiding the 
returning soldiers. His success in stamping out 
the flame of anarchy in Omaha had a bracing 
effect on the whole country which had already 
begun to grow nervous under repeated mutinies 



The Champion of Law mid Order 213 

against law and order. Nor did the leading 
educational institutions of the country seem to 
approve the Administration's course, for they be- 
gan to shower General Wood with academic 
honours. His Alma Mater, Harvard, had con- 
ferred on him an LL. D. degree in 1899. Williams 
College had bestowed on him a similar honour in 
1902, and the University of Pennsylvania in 1903. 
Between 1916 and 1919 honorary LL. D. degrees 
were given General Wood by Princeton, University 
of the South, University of Michigan, Union Col- 
lege, Wesleyan and George Washington universi- 
ties, while Norwich University and Pennsylvania 
Military College bestowed on him the degree of 
"Doctor of Military Science." 

May we quote the official citation by Princeton 
University, the great institution formerly presided 
over by Woodrow Wilson, accompanying the pres- 
entation of the honorary LL. D. degree to Gen- 
eral Wood. 



Doctor of Laws — Leonard Wood, awarded the Medal 
of Honour by Congress for his daring and determination 
in most difficult and dangerous operations ; winning new 
credit in the Spanish War; Military Governor of Cuba, 
doing his work with scrupulous fairness and swift de- 
cision until the island was safely transferred to the new 
Cuban Republic; for five years on arduous duty in the 
Philippines; Governor of Moro Province; later Chief -of- 



214 The Life of Leonard Wood 

Stafif and now commanding the Department of the 
East; Major-General in the United States Army. In 
our defenceless state he has sounded the reveille to 
waken a slumbering nation from its dream of security, 
bidding us rise and take our place like men to save our 
freedom and help to save the imperilled freedom of the 
world. 



Months before the war closed we had begun to 
talk about the reconstruction and its problems. 
Some of our inspired sages had predicted that this 
would be a different and a better world as soon as 
autocracy had been overthrown and the world 
made "safe for democracy." They had told 
us that the blood-bath in Europe would cleanse 
our hearts of unselfishness, and once Germany was 
beaten, peace and social justice would reign for 
evermore. 

On the other hand, the radicals of the country, 
who were fairly eating out their own hearts with 
class hatred, threatened the Government with 
destruction and damnation, applauded every 
strike, excused every act of violence against law 
and order, and openly advocated the Russian' 
order of things as a panacea for all governmental 
ills. They shouted themselves hoarse over the 
general strike in Seattle, gloated over the trag- 
edies of Chicago and Omaha as symptomatic of 
the Government's inefficiency, and waited im- 



The Champion of Law and Order 215 

patiently for the two great industrial battles — the 
steel and the coal strikes, toward which the country 
was being permitted to drift. The forces of Capi- 
tal and Labour were piling up arms and ammunition 
for an annihilating war which would cripple in- 
dustry and bring discomfort and suffering to 
millions. 

On October ith. Governor Goodrich of Indiana 
telephoned General Wood asking him to take 
charge of the stril<;e situation in Gary, Indiana, 
the chief centre of the steel labour war. Condi- 
tions in the city had become so difficult that the 
local police and the state militia were unable to 
assure law and order. In defiance of the local 
authorities, mass meetings were being held by 
strikers addressed by men who advocated direct 
action in all labour disputes. 

Wood received the call for help at his head- 
quarters in East Ohio Street, Chicago. A few 
minutes later army trucks packed with overseas 
veterans were speeding from Fort Sheridan, north 
of Chicago, to the steel city about thirty miles 
south of Chicago. Colonel Mapes was in im- 
mediate command. Five hours after Governor 
Goodrich had telephoned, the soldiers were in 
Gary with Wood in general charge. 

The Gary situation was so loaded with mischief 
that many friends of the General, who were already 



216 The Life of Leonard Wood 

pushing him to the forefront as Republican 
presidential candidate, charged that the Admin- 
istration purposely had left him in command of the 
Central Department in order that he should 
receive the onus of the blame if there should be any 
trouble in Gary. There is every reason to believe 
that no such motive existed. General Wood 
could easily have evaded going to Gary. He 
voluntarily assumed charge of patrolling the steel 
strike and restoring law and order in a town which 
last October probably had a larger proportion of 
wild-eyed radicals than any other community in 
America. 

It was the same old story. Wood walked in, and 
disorder and anarchy walked out. There was no 
further excitement to be found in the place. 
Gary, Indiana, had figured on the first pages of all 
the daily papers of the country for days until Wood 
arrived. After most of the agitators had fled and 
the radical leaders, who stayed, had been arrested, 
Gary became a city of no news which meant good 
news. Law and order were restored by the old 
Wood method, without the firing of a shot. The 
city has since witnessed a tense labour struggle, 
but strikers, workers, employers, and other citi- 
zens of Gary have walked the streets in security. 
Their freedom, guaranteed under the Constitution, 
was not abridged, and they were relieved from 



The Champion of Law and Order 217 

daily association with some of the most undesir- 
able elements of the land. Gary was the nerve 
centre of the great labour struggle in which more 
than 200,000 men were involved. With 1,200 
soldiers, Wood kept the place peaceful. 

General Wood kept Gary quiet and orderly 
without arousing either antagonism or criticism 
from the labour leaders themselves. One of the 
champions of the strikers, known to sympathize 
with the radical wing of the American Federation 
of Labour, said: 

*'I doubt whether the Gary job could have 
been done better. There was military administra- 
tion at Gary that was somehow coolly and shrewdly 
managed from the top; in similar situations, it has 
almost always happened that the mihtary per- 
mitted itself to be used, was outmaneuvered or 
tricked by the instruments and machinations of 
the anti-labour crowd, while at Gary I found the 
feeling on both sides that the military was neu- 
tral." 

General Wood and his men were strictly neutral 
except toward the prosperous little nest of Reds in 
Gary. Wood cleaned out that nest, arrested the 
revolutionary fledglings and turned them over to 
the proper authorities. One morning the news- 
papers pubKshed a story stating that censorship 
had been established. Another press report 



218 The Life of Leonard Wood 

stated that Wood had made a personal applica- 
tion to the War Department that he be assigned 
to duty in the strike-stricken city. Both tales 
were without any foundation. The censorship 
story probably grew out of the fact that news- 
papermen were warned by the military authorities 
not to publish certain reports until they could be 
verified. The story of Wood's application to the 
War Department for duty at Gary is almost too 
absurd to pay attention to. Gary was within his 
military jurisdiction. He might have asked to be 
relieved from duty there. He would no more 
have asked to be placed in charge there than a 
captain of a company would ask Washington for 
permission to take charge of his own company. 

At the request of Governor John J. Corn well of 
West Virginia, General Wood sent eight hundred 
veterans of the First Division to West Virginia the 
last of October to prevent any disorders in the coal 
strike. No trouble occurred and the troops were 
never required to use their weapons. In the coal 
fields there was probably less radicalism among the 
workers than- in Gary. On the other hand, the 
coal miners were in a bad temper, ready for a 
fight at any moment. They were used to hunting 
in the mountains. They were expert riflemen. 
Only the prompt arrival of troops, which could 
assume absolute control, assured peace. 



The Champion of Law and Order 219 

No sign of lawlessness of any sort appeared after 
Wood assumed charge. Neither employer nor 
employee could charge that troops were taking 
sides in the labour fight. In Gary, Wood had per- 
mitted the strikers to hold mass meetings in halls 
as long as there was no seditious talk against the 
Government. The right of assembly and free 
discussion was never tampered with. The same 
rule prevailed in the coal districts. 

In discussing the two strikes, Wood declared 
that he had found the overwhelming majority of 
the workers and strikers thoroughly loyal. Dis- 
loyalty, he found, was confined to a very small 
number, mostly foreigners — anarchists and Bol- 
shevists. 

Late in November, after he had ample oppor- 
tunities to study the coal, and the steel strike. 
General Wood said: 

"While we deprecate and denounce the alien 
un-American influence that is endeavouring to 
poison the minds of our labouring men, it is 
imperative that we should satisfy the demands of 
the workers for a fighting chance in fife for them- 
selves and their families. This applies to every 
labourer, whether he works with his hands or his 
brain, whether he digs coal from a mine or plants 
Greek roots in a college. 

"No industrious man or woman, equipped to 



220 The Life of Leonard Wood 

perform satisfactorily their special tasks, should be 
forced to worry about the necessaries and comforts 
of life. Whenever, or wherever, it is discovered 
that a worker hasn't a fighting chance in life the 
conditions should be changed at once. 

"That was a sound proposition of our fore- 
fathers that every man is entitled to life, hberty, 
and the pursuit of happiness. And he is assured 
of not one of the three unless his labour receives a 
just reward. 

"It boils down to this, that we must establish 
keen sympathetic relations between all types of 
men, between those who emploj^ and those who are 
employed. Every man should be a property 
owner, and every man should be given an oppor- 
tunity to become such. This is, of course, a 
generality, but the problem confronting us can be 
solved if we stick to our American faith in the 
efficacy of publicity. AVhat we need are facts and 
figures. 

"Our laws are made by public opinion and public 
opinion will go wrong if it hasn't the facts. l>\Tiat 
we've got to stand for now are the rights of prop- 
erty, the domination of law, and the maintenance of 
public order. 

"None of these can be maintained if we submit 
to either an autocracy of wealth or an autocracy of 
labour. We must insist upon democracy, govern- 



The Champion of Law and Order 221 

ment by, for, and of all the people. Through 
democracy, the connecting link between the 
prosperity of the employer and that of the labourer 
must be conserved. 

"I don't think that our labour situation is so 
complicated that it cannot be remedied by an 
application of the Golden Rule. Why can't our 
employers realize that their employees are just as 
essential to their prosperity as for instance their 
customers. If employers treated their employees 
with something of the consideration that they treat 
their customers we'd have fewer strikes. 

"There ought to be, it seems to me, a way in 
which these strikes might be avoided. This can- 
not be done unless the public knows all the facts. 
The labour papers present only one side of the 
question and it is almost impossible for the public 
to arrive impartially at facts. I believe that if 
a court were organized with the power to hear and 
investigate the claims made by Labour and the 
counter charges made by Capital, a great many of 
these industrial disputes could be avoided. It 
is my idea that a court could be so constituted that 
it would have the power to call upon the capital- 
ists to reveal their books and that it could send 
investigators into the factories, shops, and mills 
in order to determine if the claims made by the 
employees were just. This court could then 



222 The Life of Leonard Wood 

throw the pitiless light of public opinion upon the 
facts and could point out definitely who was in the 
wrong, so that public opinion could be brought to 
bear upon the question. Indeed, I beheve we 
could benefit by investigating and adopting some 
of the practices of Austraha and Canada in these 
matters. An industrial court of investigation 
might have the power also to make an award and 
to enforce its decision. We hear a great deal about 
investigating and forcing arbitration in interna- 
tional disputes in order to avoid war. Why not 
have such a court duly constituted so as to give 
the pubHc the facts in labour controversies so as 
to prevent or shorten the great strikes and to 
force the party who is in the wrong to settle on an 
equitable basis giving the "square deal," as 
Theodore Roosevelt used to say, to both or all 
sides. 

*'If we had been more careful of the foreigners 
whom we admitted to our shores during the years 
that have gone by I do not believe that we would 
have so much industrial strife. 

"I should like to see the great organizations 
which performed such valiant and patriotic service 
during the war — the Salvation Army, the Y. M. 
C. A., the Y. W. C. A., the Jewish Welfare Board, 
the Knights of Columbus, and similar societies — 
turn their energies to the Americanization of the 



The Champion of Law and Order 223 

foreigners. They are splendidly organized, they 
have the spirit of unselfish service, and they could 
not find worthier labour at this time than that of 
instilling into the minds of our immigrants the true 
principles of our government. 

"But all such work must be done sympathetic- 
ally and intelligently, and while we should protect 
the immigrant from exploitation as well as supply 
him with the proper instruction, there must be no 
attitude of patronage on our part. Personally, 
I favour the working methods of the Salvation 
Army whose members meet the people they assist 
on a common level and labour with them as well 
as for them." 

The following semi-oflBcial statement tells what 
was done by Wood in the course of the steel strike 
at Gary. 

In the specific case of restoring law and order in 
Gary, Indiana, General Wood, upon request of the 
Governor of Indiana, ordered a detachment of troops 
to proceed to that city for the purpose of protecting life 
and property and to bring the place back to its normal 
life so far as order was concerned. Accompanied by 
his staff officers, the General made a personal investiga- 
tion of the situation and issued a proclamation defining 
the reasons why the United States troops occupied the 
city, setting forth therein rules and regulations for the 
conduct of all persons in Gary during the time of mili- 
tary occupation. This proclamation also indicated 



224 The Life of Leonard Wood 

that the city government, as estabHshed, would act as 
an agent of the mihtary authorities. After this state- 
ment had been put in writing and read to the mayor 
of Gary, who acquiesced, it was released to the local 
papers and to the papers of the country for general 
publication. Immediately thereafter, General Wood 
sent for prominent citizens of Gary, for strike leaders 
and organizers, and for certain persons who had been 
identified as participants in a parade held in defiance 
of the mayor's orders. When these persons came to- 
gether the proclamation was read to them and then 
General Wood said that the troops were not in Gary 
in the interest of the steel corporation or of the strikers, 
but were there solely for the purpose of maintaining 
law and order. 

One of the strikers asked General Wood what action 
he would take against picketing. The General's reply 
was that picketing with a reasonable number of men 
would not be interfered with so long as the pickets did 
not offer violence against any persons; that the function 
of the pickets, as he saw it, was to speak to people, 
setting forth the reasons for striking and to try to get 
others to take the same point of view and join them in 
their action, but that he would not permit any violence 
or threats or any means of intimidation to be emploj'^ed 
by the pickets, and that they would promptly be ar- 
rested if they disobeyed the regulation. Strike leaders 
notified General Wood that this arrangement was fair 
and perfectly satisfactory and that they were glad to 
have the troops in control, as they thought the strikers 
would get better treatment from the troops than they 
had been getting frqm the local civil authorities. 

After the conference the men who had assembled 



The Champion of Law and Order 225 

were dismissed, and General Wood sent for certain 
persons who had been reported to him as being of radical 
tendencies and having attempted to incite the people 
to riot. This little congregation heard a soldier's 
sermon. They were told that if they attempted any 
activities along radical lines, made any attempts to 
incite people to break the laws, they would be arrested 
at once and brought to trial. During the occupation 
of Garj' by the military, frequent raids were made 
on places known as rendezvous for radical agitators. 
Several arrests followed and many papers and docu- 
ments of various kinds of redly violent nature were 
confiscated; and with them there were taken a choice 
collection of firearms, whiskey stills, and other things. 
All of these raids were made by the civil authorities, 
backed, however, by the authority of the military. In 
Gary, every arrest has been made by the municipal 
police except in cases where men have violated the law 
or the rules and regulations of the military in the im- 
mediate presence of United States troops. In Gary 
all the men who want to work are working and without 
interference. It is not within the province nor the 
inclination of the military authorities to drive men to 
work who don't want to work because they have or 
think they have a grievance against their employers. 
The main thing is that order has been established in 
Gary and the rights of every resident of the city under 
the law have been safeguarded. 

The career of Leonard Wood up to the present 
moment has been replete with big deeds, quietly, 
unostentatiously, and efficiently performed. There 



226 TU Life of Leonard Wood 

are few living Americans who can point to a busier, 
more useful and more successful record. There are 
none who can point to an administrative and 
business executive record which even approaches 
in magnitude his Cuban exploit. And Wood was 
only forty-one when he left Cuba, having then re- 
stored the country from a national wreck to a 
happy and prosperous sovereign state. 

Wood's is peculiarly an American career. His 
whole life has been spent in the service of his coun- 
try. America has always been his chief interest. 
And he has hewn his own career, unaided, from 
the time he left his parents' home to enter college. 
Ours is still a land of self-made men. Wood 
entered Harvard University penniless, paying for 
his own education. He entered the army as a 
civilian and climbed to the top. He became 
Governor of Cuba without any previous adminis- 
trative training and made himself a most capable 
government executive. He was the receiver of 
bankrupt Cuba, directed the expenditure of 
scores of millions of dollars, liquidated enormous 
debts, pushed through to successful completion 
great public works, and he left Cuba debt-free with 
money in the treasury. 

With the vision of a true statesman he foresaw 
Europe's tragedy and our unescapable participa- 
tion in the great war. He refused to remain silent 



The Champion of Law and Order 227 

and inactive when silence and neutrality were 
commanded and when to act for the safety of the 
country jeopardized his personal advancement. 
His profession has been that of a soldier and a 
government executive, but he has yet to be touched 
by the bhght of militarism. He has been en- 
trusted by his country with many important 
missions and he has performed them all with 
distinction. He knows America as few men do. 
In a recent speech delivered in an Eastern city 
Wood said: 

"The watchword of this country should be 
*Steady' and the slogan should be 'Law and Order.' 
Hold on to the things that made us what we are. 
Stand for government under the Constitution. 
Stand for the homely, plain things which really 
lie at the foundation of our government. We 
want to stand with our feet squarely on the earth, 
our eyes on God, our ideals high, but steady." 

To-day, when the whole world is jumpy and 
nervous after the superhuman trials of the late war, 
one would have to ponder long and earnestly 
before finding a sounder watchword than Wood's 
"Steady." 

In closing this outline of Wood's life no more 
fitting words can be found than the tribute of his 
friend Theodore Roosevelt, who said of him: "He 
combined in a very high degree the qualities of 



228 The Life of Leonard Wood 

entire manliness with entire uprightness and clean- 
Kness of character. It was a pleasure to deal 
with a man of high ideals, who scorned everything 
mean and base, and who also possessed those 
robust and hardy qualities of body and mind for 
the lack of which no merely negative virtue can 
ever atone." 



THE END 



THE COUNTRY LIFE PRESS, GARDEN dTY, NEW YOKK 



